CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dex and I stepped into the half-lit hallway and I closed Dr. Hasselback’s door behind us. I moved my hand down Dex’s arm to his hand and shook it gently, peering at him.
“You OK there, Frenchie?”
His glare was very unamused, which, luckily, meant he was OK. I dropped his hand and patted him on the shoulder. “Shrinks, huh?”
He sighed and rolled his shoulders back. “Are you ready for the third floor?”
It sounded spooky and creepy already. I much preferred to deal with the doctor’s strange questions than to actually continue on with our little ghostcapade. But we had a job to do and in the event that Thursday and Block C wouldn’t happen, we had to do with what he had.
“Sure am,” I said. We started down the hallway back to the front doors. I wondered if Roundtree would be around to let us back in to get the equipment.
I voiced this to Dex and added, “I’ll just stay in here and hold the door for you. You can handle all the stuff by yourself, right? I saw you flexing earlier for the doctor.”
Dex let out a chuckle, which pleased me. “That was for you, kiddo.”
“Oh, I’m very flattered,” I teased and stopped in front of the doors.
He looked around the foyer, then opened the door. “I’ll be right back.”
“You better,” I said. I didn’t feel too good about waiting alone in the hospital. But it gave me a chance to attempt my plan. The car wasn’t far away, but there was a lot of stuff to gather. I had enough time.
As soon as the heavy door slammed shut and Dex disappeared from my sight, I turned on a dime and raced off down the darkened hallway, back toward the doctor’s office.
I knocked on the door as quietly as possible, catching my breath. And waited.
The door opened and Dr. Hasselback gave me a weary look. “Yes? Is there a problem?”
“Sort of. Can I come in? I’ll be two seconds. I just need your opinion on something.”
He wiggled his mouth and then opened the door. I shuffled in and walked over to his desk. He sat down, gestured to the chair again but I didn’t take it.
“This will only really take a moment.” I plopped my bag on the tiny patch of clear desk and rifled through it until I found my iPhone. I flicked through the apps to the camera one, knowing the doctor was watching me anxiously.
I found the application. I had secretly taken photos of each pill bottle earlier on the hunch that I would never find out what they were for. I displayed the phone for the doctor.
“I have a friend who is taking this medication. I took pictures of each label, if you just scroll around there.”
“Dex Foray?” The doctor looked at me.
“Maybe.”
“It says so on the label.”
“Oh. OK, yes. But please don’t tell him. He’s really sensitive about this and I just wanted to know why he was taking medication.”
“He’s your boyfriend?”
I shook my head adamantly. “Oh, no. No. He’s just my partner. For this show. But he’s my friend, too, and I’m worried about him.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Can you just tell me what the meds are for?”
The doctor exhaled and brought the screen closer to his eyes. “Well, these yellow pills here are for severe hallucinations. The white long ones are also for hallucinations and also anxiety. The red and blue ones are antipsychotics. All of them are usually prescribed for schizophrenia. But Dex doesn’t seem schizophrenic in the slightest. And I have no idea what the little white ones are.”
“What? Really?”
He shook his head. “No. This Doctor Bains would know, I would hope, but this name makes no sense to me. I could look it up for you if you wish.”
I nervously eyed the door, knowing Dex would try to come back in the building at any minute.
“No that’s OK. So…hallucinations. Why…why would he be taking them?”
“You’d have to ask him,” he said, handing me back my phone.
I nodded, knowing I couldn’t after this. I had gone behind his back. I felt like I couldn’t get any lower.
“But I can tell you,” he continued, “whatever is wrong with him is nothing to sneeze at. All of these pills combined…I’m surprised he’s acting as normal as he is. Though there is something off about him. About both of you.”
“Me?” I asked, sticking the phone back in my purse, feeling dirty about everything.
He leaned on his messy stacks of papers. “You know this. You’re ghost hunters. You see things that aren’t there.” >
I heard what could have been a car door slam from outside.
“I have to go,” I said, turning for the door. “Please don’t tell Dex about this. I just needed to know.”
He took one look at my face and nodded. “I won’t. You just need to watch yourselves. And try to communicate. Most ghosts come up when we can’t express ourselves.”
I nodded and gave him a quick smile. I left the room and quickly scampered down the hallway toward the doors. He wasn’t there yet.
I breathed a sigh of relief and leaned against the glass. I was shaking slightly from the overall icky feeling of going behind Dex’s back like that. And the fact that the answers didn’t help. Severe hallucinations? What had Dex been seeing? And a mystery pill? What was going on?
As gross and immoral as I felt, I still had one more part of the plan that I was going to try to squeak through. It would also take a bit of luck and timing, but I felt I had both on my side tonight. As well as a touch of evil, which was certainly helping me follow through.
Soon, Dex appeared at the door like a drowned rat, gear in both hands. He looked so helpless in the rain, waiting for me, his dark, shaggy hair wet and flat against his head, the water dripping off the edge of his nose. I walked to the door and laid my hands against the cold glass. He watched me, expectantly, maybe a bit curious as to why I was watching him and not immediately letting him in.
I’m doing this because I love you, I thought. And that makes it OK.
I stared at him, through the pane, deep into his eyes, which were even darker in the night, with the brazen glare of the outside lights casting shadows on his handsome face. I loved him and I needed to know the truth.
Finally I opened the door with two hands, pushing hard against it, and Dex stepped in, sopping wet and dripping on the floor.
“Weren’t going to let me in?” he asked, sounding mock hurt. “Second thoughts? Gonna stay here overnight instead?”
I laughed, small and a bit forced, and shut the door behind him. “Thought I would take over Roundtree’s job. It looked fulfilling.”
I took some equipment into my hands and we made our way to the third floor through the nearest stairwell. It was lit, but with a weak, cheap light that made us both look green.
We reached the third floor and pushed the stairwell door open. The floor was completely dark except for the light coming through the stairwell windows at both ends. I immediately wanted to turn and leave but the door shut behind us with an ominous click that echoed down the empty hall.
“OK, this is f*cking creepy,” I said.
“Agreed. Which is why it’s perfect.”
I gave Dex a look. He smiled at me and popped a piece of Nicorette in his mouth with his free hand. “Shall we get set up?”
I nodded and he brought out a tiny lantern from his pocket to provide a bit more light for our faint area. The only problem with that was that it made the rest of the floor look even darker than it was. Uneasy shadows danced down the corridor, tricks of the eye.
Out of his pack he brought out the EVP gadget, the first time I had ever really seen it. He had gotten it over the last week. It was supposed to pick up Electronic Voice Phenomenon, you know, like the hidden voices and sounds that we couldn’t hear properly with our own ears. The whole idea of using the EVP freaked the hell out of me, but holding the walkie talkie-sized gadget in my hands (it was really nothing more than a gimmicky tape recorder) made the unknown at least a bit familiar.
“Want to try that out tonight?” he asked, noting the way I was cradling it like some alien baby.
“I guess,” I said reluctantly. “Though I’m not sure what we could pick up. This is like the quietest mental hospital ever.”
He paused as he fiddled with the large camera on the ground, rocking slightly on his haunches.
“And how many mental hospitals have you been in?” he asked. Though his voice was low, he sounded a bit defensive and I couldn’t blame him for that.
I didn’t answer. He didn’t look too annoyed, though it was hard to tell from the light source.
“Besides, we’re on the third floor,” he continued, voice softer. “There’s nothing up here. And even if there were patients up here...you know, it’s not like the movies.”
I shrugged. “I know. Sorry. I just thought there would be screaming people or…”
“Like I said. It’s not like the movies.”
“Sorry Dex,” I mumbled, feeling ashamed.
“Don’t be. I’m not mad, I’m just saying. Not all mental hospitals mean the people behind the doors are all raving loons and wrapped up in straightjackets. I’m pretty sure that the second floor is just a bunch of rooms where you’ll find some pretty sad but fairly normal people going about their nightly business.”
“And the first floor?”
“I could smell the cafeteria was at the end of the hall, beyond the doctor’s office. Probably the communal rec room too. This isn’t a horrible place, Perry. And the people here have probably been here for a long time. Time obliterates the screams. Medication and time.”
“How long did it take for you?” I asked him, knowing full-well he wouldn’t tell me.
He got to his feet with his camera firmly in hand and looked me square in the face with a peculiarly blank expression.
“It took six months.”
I was surprised at that. At the swiftness of time, at his blunt admission. Oh, how I wanted to keep asking him, to keep peeling back the layers and find out more. I chanced it.
“And how long did you have to stay there in total?”
He sighed and rubbed his chin with his free hand, chewing his gum slowly, his eyes staring off into the blackness. “Two years.”
My mouth dropped open. Two years. In a mental institute for two whole years? A place like this one? It made my heart cave in. “Why…why were you there so long? If you were better in six months?”
He kept his eyes focused on the dark. I could see they were shiny and reflective, bouncing back what little light we had. “It’s not so easy to just leave. They have to make sure you won’t endanger yourself.”
“Did you…endanger yourself?” I asked quietly. It was so personal, so fragile of a question, I was afraid he was going to bolt and run like an unbroken horse.
“That’s how I got there,” he said calmly, finally turning his head to look at me. “I had my reasons. As I’m sure you did too.”
“Me?” I repeated. “I never tried to kill myself. What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t say you tried to kill yourself. I never really did, either. It was just…a misunderstanding. As I’m sure your accident was too.”
He used quote marks around “accident.” I frowned at him, trying to figure out what he was getting at and what he knew about this accident I had.
“What do you know about this accident? I haven’t talked to you about it.”
He raised one brow, which created a spear of a shadow across his face.
“I guess you haven’t. My bad.”
I didn’t trust that. I wracked my brain to see if I had said anything in the last few days…or even ever. Aside from my cousins mentioning some accident to him once, and telling him I had dreams about my high school days, I hadn’t said anything to him. I know I hadn’t because it was something I rarely let myself think about.
“And anyway, after a while, the hospital was the only home I had. The friends I had before eventually stopped coming to visit. I had no family. There was nothing left out there for me. Everything I had come to know and rely on was in the institute. So even when I could tell they were thinking of releasing me one year in, I did what I could to stay longer.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling stupid.
He tilted his head at me and smiled. “It’s in the past.”
Was it? My past had been coming to haunt me lately. Was it the same for him?
“I don’t know about you,” he said while coming over to me and taking the EVP device out of my hands. “But I think we need to get a move on. We’ve already wasted time talking about stuff that we could discuss any other time.”
I nearly laughed at that but I managed to stifle it in my throat. Any other time always meant never with Dex. I doubted I’d ever hear any more about his time in the hospital. But in a way, that was OK with me. Because I had a feeling he had told me more than he had ever told anyone else. And that made me feel…well…special.
We got the rest of the equipment ready as quickly as we could, while Dex plotted out how we were going to use what precious time we had.
He pointed down the hall. “If you go just a few feet in front of me…”
I did as he asked and stopped just where the lantern light failed to reach.
“I’ll have you introduce us. Keep your voice lower than normal, just in case; this mic should pick it up here, no problem. And just walk slowly down the hall. I’ll turn on the infrared.”
“And if I walk into something?” I asked.
He picked the lantern off the ground and gave it to me. “You won’t. There’s nothing here.”
I took it from him and looked behind me at the darkness. The faded light of the stairwell at the other end looked so far away.
“So I walk to the end, you follow me. That’s it?”
“No. We’ll go to the end, then come back up the hallway and I want you to try every door. Even if it’s locked. You do know how to pick locks, right?”
Actually I did. I did very well. I had great practice on my parents’ liquor cabinet growing up, practice I had hoped would come in handy tonight, hence why I had a pair of bobby pins, a credit card and tweezers in my right pants pocket.
“I can try,” I said, trying to sound surprised. “You want me to try every room here?” Will we have enough time?”
He shrugged and the recording light of the camera went up and down. He was already filming. That figured.
“Hopefully we’ll come across something interesting. If we don’t, we don’t. F*ck if we overstay our welcome, though you know the gold is in Block C anyway.”
We got started. I held the wind-up lantern in one hand, vaguely reminded of our first episode on the Oregon Coast, and gave a short spiel about the institute and what we were doing there. No point in getting into the details when Dr. Hasselback covered that thoroughly and far better than I ever could.
I walked down the hallway when I was done, taking small steps and shining the lantern on the walls. It was creepy in the dark but there was nothing fantastically off-putting about the third floor. It looked old and empty but it wasn’t decaying or anything. There weren’t even any cobwebs or dust bunnies about, which gave the impression that a cleaning crew still cleaned it every night. That put me more at ease.
We reached the end of the hallway without incident. Dex would pause every so often and hold the EVP thing still so it could pick up on something, but we wouldn’t know whether it did or not until later. We certainly didn’t hear anything except our own breathing and footsteps.
At the end of the hall, where the weak light from the other stairwell shone in, Dex discovered a blip with the camera.
“Can you fix it?” I asked, standing on my toes and trying to get a better look at the screen. It was black, even though the light said it was on and recording.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. It could be the battery, I had a feeling I should have charged it before we left. I’ll just switch it with the other camera. Won’t make much of a difference.”
He put the big camera down and started to pull the smaller, handheld one out of his pack.
It was time.
“I’m just going to go find the washroom,” I said, starting toward the door.
“Now?”
“Better now than never. I really have to pee. I’ll be right back.”
“OK. But if you’re not back in five minutes, I am coming down to get you.”
“Awww, you’re worried about me?” I asked sweetly.
“No, I’m worried about me! You think I want to be up here alone?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll be right back.”
I patted him on the arm and then opened the stairwell door with a heavy, echoing creak. I scampered down the stairs and paused at the second floor, waiting until I heard the door shut from above. Then I looked into the hallway of the second floor. It was lit but empty. So strange to know people were in their rooms, hiding, at 5:30 p.m. It didn’t make any sense to me but I wasn’t about to think about it too much either. I had a devious job to do and this floor was probably where I had the best chance of doing it.
I cautiously opened the door and stepped onto the hallway. I closed it behind me with as much care as I could muster, not wanting to alert anyone. I was glad for my Chucks on my feet. Though they squeaked when wet, they were dry now and if I walked extra slowly, like, ‘we’re hunting wabbits’ kind of slow; I would be as silent as air.
I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for. All the doors looked the same; they just had different numbers on them. I needed something that stood out and looked like it belonged to the staff.
A wild laugh broke out from one of the rooms and I froze in my tracks. The room was in front of me and to the right. The laugh continued, sounding more manic, then sad. And then the sobbing started.
“Please let me die,” the voice said. “Please let me die.”
My eyes widened. My heart froze. The voice, sounding clear yet still muffled, continued, repeating the phrase. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. It was unearthly. Inhuman. Haunting. >
And then it broke out into laughter again. I gathered up enough breath from the fright to keep going, cautiously passing the door, which simply read “13.”
Then silence. Like it never happened. I held my fingers to my throat, trying to steady the madness of my pulse and kept my eyes focused on what I had come here to do. I kept walking.
I was near the other end of the hall when I saw what I was looking for. A door that said, “Staff Only.”
I looked around me before I quietly laid my hand on the knob and turned it. Of course it was locked. It wouldn’t budge either way. There could even be nurses on the other side. Just because the hospital was closed, surely that didn’t mean the staff was sent home. These patients needed care around the clock. Didn’t they?
I laid my head against the door and listened. After a few seconds, I still couldn’t hear anything and I got my credit card out of my pants pocket. I would try that first.
I slipped it between the door and the lock but after a few attempts, I decided that was not the way to go. It was an old lock but it wasn’t succumbing.
I brought out the bobby pin next and bent it straight. I hunched down, peered at the entrance of the keyhole and stuck the pin in, feeling for the catch inside. I looked around again as I continued to fiddle, expecting Roundtree, Dex or a mental patient to come running toward me at any moment.
But they didn’t. And the pin pushed against something light and a giant click told me to turn the knob. The door opened and thankfully it was silent on its hinges.
I looked around me once more for reassurance and then stepped inside. I didn’t want to hit the lights in case someone outside, like a security guard, was watching, so I brought out my iPhone and aimed the useless flashlight app around the room. There was enough light from the streetlights outside the window that I wasn’t going to trip over anything.
It was an empty office with just a desk and chair. There were a few picture frames on the table of a woman, perhaps Roundtree, and children. I didn’t have time to explore. In the corner was a tall industrial chest. That was the thing I was looking for.
I opened it. It creaked. Loudly. I froze and hung onto my breath, poised and ready to run out of the room if I heard anyone coming. But after a few seconds, everything else stayed silent.
I aimed the iPhone into the cabinet and shone it over the various shelves inside. There were pill bottles on every shelf, but whether they contained what I was looking for was another story.
The first shelf had some innocent looking white pills that matched the ones that Dex had, but when I got a better look at the name, it seemed too dangerous and risky to take. I had to stick with what I knew. What I wanted were placebos.
I went to the next shelf. Here I found tiny yellow pills. I picked up the bottle and looked at it closely. It said diazepam on the label. I knew this wasn’t the best thing to be taking, but at least I knew what it was. I had spent half of my life on Valium. Plus they looked exactly like the pills that Dex had been taking for his hallucinations or whatever apparently ailed him.
I quickly opened the pill bottle and poured half of the contents into my hand and shoved it into my pocket. Then I continued searching. I didn’t find the placebos until the very end, but at least they matched Dex’s pills with their round, Aspirin-like body and there were a lot of them. I took a generous helping of those out of the bottle and shoved them in my other pocket.
I didn’t want to waste any more time. Two different pills were enough for my experiment to go through. I closed the cabinet door, slowly this time, and crept over to the door. I poked my head out into the hallway and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw it was still empty. I was shaking all over. My body, and my subconscious.
I closed the door behind me with nothing more than a gentle click and started walking down the hall back the way I came.
A loud POP came from behind me while the hall in front of me became a smidge darker. The loud and unexpected noise caught my breath and made me jump mid-stride. I stopped and stood still.
Another quick POP followed by another level of dimness. I turned around expecting to see someone but what I saw was the overhead lights at the very end slowly going off.
Pop. Pop. Pop. They were fizzling out and leaving the once-bright hallway in darkness, as if some invisible being was going along and removing the bulbs. I knew enough that the scenario wasn’t all that crazy.
The dark was catching up with me. I turned and started to run as quietly as possible, chalking it all up to faulty wiring on a stormy night. But as I neared the stairwell at the end, the stairwell lights went off and so did every other light in the hallway.
The darkness engulfed me. I paused, disoriented and scared out of my wits.
Thump, thump, thump.
The sound of footsteps raced toward me from the far end of the hallway. They didn’t sound quick but they were coming.
For me.
I ran blindly for the door and felt around for it until my hands connected with the handle. I yanked it. It wouldn’t open. The door had locked behind me. There was blackness outside and in. I whirled around, hearing the footsteps still coming, this strange, slow and sloppy run.
They stopped somewhere in front of me, maybe a few inches away. I held my breath. All I could feel was that terrifying notion that something was standing in the dark and watching me. Wanting me.
“Please let me die.” The voice from earlier came from down the hall.
“Yes, please let me die,” another voice came, this one closer to me and from the left.
“He let me die,” said one more. This one sounded familiar. This one wasn’t a human being, a patient in a room with no hope or normal life left. This one had an accent. This one was dead. It was coming from right in front of me.
I slowly stuck my arm straight out in front of me. I wanted to see how close it was. I waved it around but hit nothing.
Raucous laughter erupted from the rooms. It caught on like a wave, crashing down the hall until it was all I could hear. Insane, unforgiving, unrelenting laughter, the type that you’d hear being howled at the moon. It reverberated through the hallway until it forced me to cover my ears.
I thought about calling Dex. He could come down and let me out. I could tell him I went to look for the bathroom on this floor. I took one hand away from my ear and took out my phone, conscious of not crushing the vulnerable, secret meds in my pocket.
BANG!
The lights above me suddenly came on with the sound of snapping wires and the low hum of a generator kicking in. The area just in front of me was illuminated, hurting my eyes. I could see again.
And there was nothing there.
The same went for the rest of the hallway. As each light went back on, it showed how empty the place was. And the laughter stopped along with it.
Until the end.
The last light went on.
There was a woman standing beneath the waxy light bulb. In the middle of the hall. Facing me. She was far enough away that I couldn’t make out her face. But I knew from the snakelike angle of her head that I didn’t want to.
She stood as still as night, not moving. Just facing me like a gunslinger during a standoff.
This…wasn’t good.
I slowly lifted up my hand that had the phone and dialed Dex while keeping my eyes on her.
She still hadn’t moved. But I knew it was misleading.
I put the phone to my ear and after a few rings (I could almost hear it ringing on the floor above) he answered.
“Perry? You OK?”
“I’m locked on the second floor,” I whispered. “Please come and let me out right now.”
“OK, one sec,” he said. I heard him hang up, a few footsteps from above and then the sound of the third-level door opening onto the stairwell. I breathed a sigh of relief, not taking my eyes off the figure at the end.
Which was good. Because she twitched. And now, she was moving, walking toward me, twice as fast as a normal person, almost gliding down the hall as if she were on skates.
Her arms were outstretched, her head wobbled back and forth with each quick stride, and a thick flow of blood flowed off of her, falling to the floor behind her like a red bridal train.
It happened so fast.
She was there.
And then she was in my face.
Her grey, decaying hands around my neck. Her hands felt ice cold. She smelled like gin. She buzzed like bees. And her mouth opened wide, wider than any mouth should ever open, like a steel trap on loose hinges, with brown, rotting teeth as a horrific frame. A single wasp crawled to the edge of her bloated, black tongue. The whole hallway vibrated with an incredibly loud drone that was deafening and debilitating. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t live.
“Perry!”
The door swung open and before Dex could enter, the girl was suddenly gone. Vanished into thin air and taking her dead hands, split face and infernal noise with her.
Dex looked around the empty hallway wildly and then focused on me. “What just happened to you?”
I shook my head, placing my fingers at my throat where the icy feeling wasn’t going away. I pointed at the floor above. “Need to get out of here,” I croaked.
He nodded, got me through the door and up the steps. Halfway up, I stopped on the landing and motioned for him to stay. I leaned over on my knees and tried to get my breath and my bearings.
Dex had the small camera on him and brought it up to my level, aiming it on me. “What happened?”
He was filming but I didn’t care. I was having a hard time gathering my thoughts, almost like someone else was sucking them out of my head.
I raised my finger in the air for him to give me a second and slowly breathed in through my nose. I felt at my neck again and gestured for him to touch it.
He did. His hand was hot.
“It’s freezing. You’re ice cold, Perry,” he said. He removed his hand and put it up to my forehead. “You’re hot here though. What happened? Did you see something? Did something…hurt you?”
He stammered through those last words in a way I would have normally found touching except I didn’t know how I felt.
I nodded. “I went…I went to use the bathroom here. I got halfway down the hall and all the lights started going out…one by one. Then there was this laughter. I think it was the patients. From behind their doors. They were all laughing. And then they stopped. The lights slowly came back on. And when they hit the very end…I saw her.”
“Saw…her? The girl you saw in the apartment?”
“Yes. It was her. I saw her earlier today too.”
He nodded, not looking very impressed. He nibbled on his lip for a few seconds and then said, “In the bathroom. At the restaurant. I wanted to ask you about that but…I didn’t want to pry.”
That was an odd thing for him to say. Dex liked to pry about everything and anything, especially when it had something to do with me. It was almost like a hobby to him, just as bugging him for information was a hobby to me. But I let it slide. For now.
“Yeah. It was her. And her again now. She ran after me. And suddenly she was right here.” I waved my hand in front of my face. “I could smell her…the gin.”
Dex turned a wicked shade of pale. All expression left his face and the camera lowered an inch. I watched him carefully, not expecting that reaction.
“What is it? Dex? Have you seen her too?”
He shook his head, blinking hard, seeming to come out of what mini-episode he just had. “No. It just…reminded me of something.”
“What?”
“Did she hurt you?” he peered at my cold neck inquisitively.
“She wanted to kill me. I don’t know if she hurt me. But she would have if you had not shown up. Then she just…” I snapped my fingers.
I put my hands back to my throat and felt around again. My skin temperature was returning to normal but my heart was still racing, the beat popping out my jugular like a drum. “I’m OK.”
He nodded, not looking too convinced, and then turned off the camera. “We’ve got 20 minutes left. Care to do the rest of the third floor with me? I’ll understand if you say no.”
I didn’t actually want to do anything but go back in the car and return to their apartment with Jenn and Fat Rabbit, as funny as that sounded. But at the same time, I felt like as long as I was with Dex, I would be OK. For whatever reasons, this ghost was not showing herself to Dex. Only to me. As long as I was with him, I would be safe. At least, that’s what I was counting on.
“That’s OK, let’s do it,” I said and stepped onto the first step.
Dex reached out and put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “Are you sure, kiddo? You’re my most precious equipment here.”
I gave him a brief smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. At least if she comes back now, maybe we can get her on film.”
“Now we’re cooking with gas,” Dex said with a smile. He was pleased to keep going; lord knows how important the show was to him, but I could tell he was the tiniest bit torn up about leading me up there and inviting the same kind of torment.
I was torn, too, but I determined to go through with it. One of those instances where turning back wouldn’t really make much difference. This ghost was appearing in his apartment for crying out loud. It was wherever I went. That thought sunk my chest like a heavy rock through water.
We walked up to the third floor and entered the hallway, which was still barely lit by the lantern on the ground. Some of his equipment lay scattered about, including the EVP gadget, which was propped up against the wall, lights blinking, obviously recording.
Dex held up the camera and motioned down the hall. “Now we’ll just try each door and see what happens.”
I nodded and walked forward into the darkness, the lantern now swinging from my arm. The only sounds were our footsteps and my heart in my head. We stopped at the first door. It had no numbers on it. I paused before I tried the handle and looked at Dex and the camera. >
“Where is everyone, anyway?” I asked him in nothing more than a whisper.
“What do you mean?” his voice automatically lowered to match mine.
“When I was downstairs. I heard people in their rooms. But I never saw any nurses. Do they really leave people alone like that? Is that normal?”
He shrugged. “It could be. If they operate by different hours here and they control those hours, this might be their bedtime. I’m sure Roundtree is flitting about in her bat-like way, but that’s probably it. The place I was in had over 100 patients but I’m sure one head nurse could handle them all when they are supposed to be sleeping.”
“But how can they sleep now?” It was so f*cking early.
“Kiddo, I don’t know. We can ask the doctor on Thursday. But for now, we’re running out of time, OK. Just…try the door.”
I sighed and turned to it. I placed my hand on the handle and it shocked me with a giant bolt of static electricity that left me speechless for a few seconds and unable to move. It was like I had been poking around a live light bulb.
“Jesus Christ, that was some shock!” Dex exclaimed. “I could see that as clear as lightening. Are you OK?”
I nodded when I found my nerves again but was a bit iffy about touching the knob. I stepped back and said, “You try it.”
Dex grimaced in the low light but he stepped forward, hand extended. He placed it on the knob….
…and shook back and forth violently, his teeth chattering loudly with his spasms.
“Dex!” I yelled and came forward, unsure of whether I should touch him or not.
But he stopped abruptly and took his hand away from the door. “Just kidding.”
He smiled at me. Enraged, I punched him on the shoulder. Hard. “That wasn’t f*cking funny, you a*shole!”
“It was kind of funny,” he said, still smiling, though it was disappearing slowly.
I crossed my arms and shook my head. “No, it wasn’t. And you’re opening all the doors from now on.”
He pouted but his lips reversed when he realized how angry I was. How dare he just make light of that, considering everything that had been happening to me. After everything I had just told him. What a f*cking chump.
“Sorry kiddo, I was just-”
“Just open the f*cking door,” I said.
He nodded quickly and tried. The knob actually turned and the door opened with a tiny push from his shoulder.
We stood in the doorway and I brought the lantern light forward. At first we could only see the swirling dust catching in the beam, but after it settled and our eyes learned to look past it, we could see a narrow room comprised of a single bed, a sink with a cloudy mirror above it, an armoire, a door to either a bathroom or a closet, and a side table. The window was covered by a heavy shade that blocked out most of the light from outside.
“So this is what they look like on the inside,” I said while breathing out. “This is terrible. To live like this…”
Dex didn’t say anything. He pushed the door open wider, pushing in the lock on the knob as he did so, and stepped in. I wasn’t too eager to follow him. I stood where I was in the doorway.
“Was it like this for you?” I asked. I couldn’t help but relate everything we were going through to him. It was hard not to. We were in a mental hospital, who better to know what was going on than someone who had lived in one. For two whole years. It still boggled my mind.
“A bit,” he answered hesitantly. “A bit bigger. It was New York. And I did have some inheritance at the time. But the same idea.”
And there I was, feeling sorry for him again while seconds earlier he had acted like the biggest jerk in the world. I breathed out a puff of angry air, annoyed at my stupid feelings.
“What is it?” he asked, his head turning toward me in the dark.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Now what? Film the room? There’s not much in here. I’m not sure what you were hoping to find.”
“Can you come in and close the door?”
I could. But I didn’t want to. “Why?”
“Just…do it.”
I looked back at the empty, black hall behind me and wondered if something was watching us play it all out. I shivered. I wouldn’t be safe anywhere.
I stepped in the room, still careful not to make any excess noise, and slowly shut the door.
“OK,” I said.
“Turn off the lantern.”
“Are you serious?”
He walked over to the sink and placed the camera on the edge of it. Then he walked across to the bed, which only consisted of a moldy-looking mattress, and sat down. He patted the space beside him.
“Sit down and turn it off.”
I didn’t know what his plan was but I knew I didn’t like it. I still did what he said, though. Mainly because Dex had an uncanny ability of being right when things seemed overly wrong.
I sat beside him, immediately feeling the cold seep in through my pant bottoms. I shivered from the thought of rampant mold on my ass.
Dex took the lantern from me, turned it off and placed it on the floor. Then he put his arm around me and pressed me up against him, shoulder to shoulder.
“Um, what are you doing?” I asked suspiciously.
“Trying to comfort you.”
Was he? I couldn’t tell in the dark, in this small claustrophobic room on the abandoned floor of a mental hospital. There could be no comfort here.
“I’m OK, Dex,” I said and lifted his arm off me. He took it back and didn’t say anything. I could tell his attention was already somewhere else.
“What are we-”
“Shhhh,” he hissed.
I shut my mouth, stopped my breath, and listened. At first I couldn’t hear anything except the rain outside and the occasional blast of winter wind.
Then I heard it. Footsteps coming out from the hallway. Not like the ones I had heard earlier, the ones that belonged to the girl. These footsteps were slower, more discreet and even gaited.
I suddenly wanted Dex’s strong arm back around my shoulders.
“Wha-” I opened my mouth to speak again but he pressed his finger against my lips and held it there. Despite the circumstances and my rising fear, there was still a tiny part of me that was sorely tempted to put his finger in my mouth and suck on it.
We both listened, as still and quiet as statues. The footsteps came closer.
And closer.
Closer still.
Then they stopped, right outside the door. Dex took his finger away from my lips and put his arm back around my shoulder, holding me in such a way as if I was about to bolt. I wanted to, but if I went out the door, I’d run into whatever the hell was out there.
The door knob jiggled. The sound of it turning. Dex had locked it and now I knew why. The jiggling continued.
I nervously eyed the camera on the sink, which was filming the door and understood what Dex had done. But what would we do if the thing came inside?
The knob stopped rattling. It was followed by a few heavy knocks that filled the tiny room and made the window rattle. Then there was a scuffling sound, as if the person (creature?) was leaning against the door, trying to hear us.
Then it stopped. The footsteps picked up again and continued back down the hallway from where they came. We listened to them until they faded away into the night.
We waited for a good five minutes, breathing as quietly as possible. It felt like the longest five minutes of my life. Dex’s grip around my shoulder’s loosened and eventually he took his arm off me.
I leaned close to him, sensing his face wasn’t too far away, and whispered, “What the hell was that? Did you know that was going to happen?”
“Sort of. One of the things people had reported was that back in the day, a security guard had killed himself. Hung himself on this floor in one of the rooms. Apparently he had gotten too close to the patients and one in particular had been…mean. Played mind games with him. He killed himself, and afterward people reported him walking up and the down the halls, making sure everyone was in bed and asleep. I don’t think he means any harm but…I would have hated to see what happened if I hadn’t locked it.”
“But you heard that, right? The footsteps? You heard the doorknob turn?”
“Yes,” he said, sounding surprised, almost insulted. “I hope the camera got it too. That’s really all we need to make tonight worthwhile.”
The reason I had asked was that Dex hadn’t seen anything else this whole time. Sometimes I wondered if only I picked up on certain things. And maybe I did. But it was a relief to know what just happened was something shared by both of us.
“Can we go now?” I asked, ready to get the hell out of there, even though I didn’t feel like making it down three floors of dead security guard, mutilated bleeding girl, and one already suspicious doctor.
I felt him nod in the dark. “We’ve outstayed our welcome anyway.”
He got up and gathered the camera, turned on the lantern and we left the room. The hallway looked the same as it had earlier. Blissfully unoccupied.
He closed the door quietly behind us. I began to walk away.
“Hey wait,” he called out, reaching for my arm.
I stopped. He flicked a few switches on the camera until the infrared came on, the one that picked up heat sources. He aimed it at the door.
Through the viewfinder, I saw two large handprints lit up in a glowing pattern of yellow and red. They were fading fast.
“Are those yours?” I asked.
Dex reached with his hand forward and held it beside the handprint without touching it. The handprint was almost twice the size of Dex’s hands. They weren’t his and they most definitely were not mine.
“The security guard,” Dex whispered excitedly. “I think we’ve f*cking got something here. F*ck G.J. Jermaine and his Douche Factory. We’ve got this.”
We both watched the camera screen until the colors on the handprint faded and the door looked normal again. That was some pretty awesome proof to have. That almost made everything tonight worthwhile.
Dex shut off the camera and looked at me. He was grinning. It lit up his face more than the lantern light did. He looked ridiculously manic and ridiculously handsome. I couldn’t help but smile back at him. Then I turned and headed down the hall before I got all mushy-eyed.
We made it down the hallway (Dex pausing briefly to collect the EVP he left recording), made it down the stairs and to the heavy front doors that led outside. This time Roundtree was at her post. She eyed us warily from her short seat.
“I hope you weren’t causing trouble up there. This place has no use for troublemakers,” she said.
“No way, ma’am. You’re probably the biggest troublemaker of them all, ain’t that right, sweetheart?” Dex said in his most sincere voice. He opened the door and we bustled out into the cold, wet evening before we could hear her response.
He looked down at me as we walked over to the car, adjusting his pack on his shoulder. “I could never get along with the nurses. Don’t know why.”
I shook my head. We got back in the car and headed back into the city and civilization, leaving the looming building with its layers of secrets behind us.
For now.