Ashes to Ashes (Experiment in Terror #8)

“People,” she said loudly. “Ghosts don’t bother me but people do. How do we know there isn’t some homeless person, some vagrant, living in the building? They could have a dog. They could set up a nice little area for themselves upstairs and no one would know.”

 

“I know what I saw,” I said. “It wasn’t a dog.”

 

“But you don’t know for sure,” she said. “Your eyes play tricks on you, you know that. That’s why you and Dex didn’t see the same thing.”

 

“I also know ghosts play tricks on me too.”

 

Dex waved his camera in the air. “I have the footage, we can take a look and then figure out what to do. Either way, it’s eleven o’clock at night. If we wanted to, we could leave this place and go stay at the motel.”

 

“No, we can’t,” I reminded him. “We’re locked in here, remember? Carl has the keys, we don’t.”

 

“Baby, there are emergency exit doors on either end. We can leave. We’ll just probably get in major shit for it.”

 

“We’ll probably get in major shit already for tripping the motion detector,” I muttered. I pushed my fingers into my forehead and then looked at Rebecca. “Okay, boss. What do you suggest we do? I can tell you what I’m not doing and that’s going back upstairs. But I’m also not staying down here by myself. If you want to go explore with the camera and the light by yourself, you go right ahead.”

 

“Okay,” she said, holding out her hands. “Give those to me.”

 

I held the light to my chest and out of her reach. “Rebecca…I was kind of kidding.”

 

“Well, I’m not. You guys saw something. I want to see what I can find. They’ll already know tomorrow that we were upstairs so we should try and abuse it while we can. I want to go upstairs. Alone.”

 

I looked at Dex. “She’s crazy.” She was crazy.

 

“I know,” she said smartly, looking at both of us. “I really am not in the right frame of mind now, let alone lately, but dealing with this sounds preferable to thinking about other things, so if you two will please indulge me.” She made a grabby motion with her hands.

 

“It could be dangerous,” Dex said, though I could tell from his tone that he was relenting.

 

She pursed her lips. “Maybe I feel like living life on the wild side.” She snatched the camera out of his hands and then took the light from me. She fixed a few settings on the camera then nodded at us. “If I’m not back in thirty minutes…just wait longer.”

 

We watched as she walked off down the hall.

 

“I should really go after her,” Dex said, making a move to follow.

 

“Don’t you fucking dare, Dex,” I said as I grabbed the back of his coat. “Don’t you dare leave me here alone. You can’t do that to me.”

 

His expression softened as he saw how panicked I was. “I won’t. I’m sorry. I’m just worried about her.”

 

“Well, so am I!” I said. “We know what we saw. We’ll kind of.” The more I started thinking about it, maybe it had been a trick of my eyes. Maybe it really was a dog. Maybe there really was some squatter upstairs. Funny thing was, I hoped it wasn’t. When it came to Rebecca, ghosts were less of a threat.

 

“This has been one hell of a first night, hasn’t it,” I muttered.

 

“You can say that again.” He grabbed my arm. “No use waiting for her out here. Let’s get ready for bed and by the time we’re ready to fall asleep, she’ll be back.”

 

And if she isn’t? I thought. What then?

 

Even though sleep was almost unheard of, Dex and I did get into our pajamas and settled in for bed. He walked me over to the washroom where he stood guard as I did my business because I was too chicken shit to go alone. By the time we got back to the nurses’ quarters and settled into our beds—I decided to squeeze in with Dex on one bed that night—Rebecca returned.

 

Naturally she appeared in our doorway like a shadow figure, nearly prompting me to scream before I realized it was her.

 

Dex and I sat up, and I nearly fell off the bed in doing so.

 

“What happened?” he asked.

 

She sighed and came into the room, shutting the door behind her with a click. She plopped down on a wheelie chair across from us and put the camera and light on the counter. “Well, I didn’t see anything weird. Unusual, maybe. The light was on in the room when I went. It was a room with an old, moldy desk and a desk lamp. The lamp was on…no idea how, I guess they do have electricity up there after all. I didn’t see any signs of habitation though. Maybe that’s on the other floors, I don’t know. But there were no moving shadows or children’s voices.”

 

“But you believe us,” I reminded her.

 

She nodded, staring off into space, her eyes looking tired. “Again, yes Perry, I believe you. I heard the music in the tunnel earlier. I believe there’s something about this place….you can definitely feel it on that floor, too. It’s like the air pressure has changed or something. But did I see anything, experience anything weird aside from that lamp? No. Shall we watch the footage?”

 

“You know what,” I said, “I don’t think that’s the last thing I should see at night. How about we look it over when it’s daylight?”

 

I had to admit, the fact that nothing unusual happened to her made me feel a million times better. Still, even after she got settled in for the night, I got out of bed and shoved a chair under the doorknob. If something, or someone, really wanted in the room, it wouldn’t keep them out. But it made me feel saner. As did Dex’s strong, protective arms around me.

 

I just wished I had something similar to apply to my head, some way to prevent my mind from dwelling on dark figures crawling on all fours, or ghost children chasing after a ball.

 

It felt like the sun was coming up by the time my weary body finally found sleep.