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“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. Fuck 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.
