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Abby slides a file across the table to Mel, who opens it hesitantly. The angle of the camera offers no glimpse of its contents.
ABBY: Autopsy report. Look at the date. And the location.
MEL: It says Jane Doe.
ABBY: There’s a photo, but I don’t recommend—
Mel turns the page and lets out a small cry, pressing a hand to her mouth.
MEL: Oh my God. What—what happened to her?
ABBY: It’s not... that isn’t relevant right now. But it’s not your fault. It happened long before you met her.
MEL: But she was there. She was with us.
ABBY: I know. And I don’t think she left you when the dark came. There’s a voice in the video, right before the phones shut off. I’ve listened to it a few times. It’s her, Mel.
MEL: I... I wasn’t sure. I thought so, but then I decided it wasn’t possible.
ABBY: What happened?
MEL: She saidquiet. And we all went quiet. And we heard this sound. It was like—a sort of singing. Humming. And a scuttling. And then someone whisperedthis way, and the door next to me opened. I went through. I don’t know if I trusted the voice or if I was just more afraid of whatever was making that sound, but the others followed.
Abby nods.
MEL: You really think it was Miranda?
ABBY: Sara never told you?
MEL: Wait. Sara knew? Why wouldn’t she—
Her brow furrows.
ABBY: That is a big part of what we’re trying to piece together.
VIDEO EVIDENCE
Retrieved from the cell phone of Melanie Whittaker
Recorded April 19, 2017, 12:52 a.m.
Mel, Trina, Jeremy, Kyle, and Anthony move swiftly down the hall, their footsteps echoing. The scuttling and the singing follow them. The hallways are a tangle; they make little sense. They approach a T-intersection.
TRINA: It’s getting closer.
MEL: Then hurry!
Her voice is too loud in the quiet hall. The humming sound swells, and the camera spins around as Mel whirls to face the thing that’s following them.
It could almost be called a spider. Thick black legs spike around thecorner, spanning the hallway, with their hooked ends gougingholes in the wall to either side. It glistens, even in the shadows. Then comes the head: almost human, but eyeless, desiccated flesh pulled tight over the contours of a skull. Its lips pull back from black, jagged teeth, and a long, papery tongue, pointed at the end, slithers between them, tasting the air.
Its shoulders emerge next—withered skin, protruding bones. No arms, only nubs, puckered flesh at their ends. A thin chest and then a rib cage, exposed, blackened. But more disturbing than that, something is inside the ribs. Barelyvisible as more than the faintest silhouette—and fingers, threading through the ribs, like hands about to part curtains and peer through. It is from behind the ribs that the piping, singing sound comes.
Where the humanoid torso’s legs should be, it connects clumsily to an arachnid’s body. It approaches steadily as its tongue lashes the air.
GRACE: Hey. This way.*
The voice is a whisper. Mel sucks in a startled breath as a white woman peers out from one of the sides of the hallway intersection ahead, beckoning. She wears a T-shirt with a cartoon fox and a grungy gray sweatshirt. Her hair is buzzed short at the temples and longer on top, sections of it dyed blue. Midthirties, perhaps, though weariness ages her.
