Autumn Falls

by A. R. Kingston

  An inkling of dread stirred in her stomach, and as they opened the door and stepped out into the deserted hallway a wave of sour air hit her face. Paint peeled and hung from the ceiling, white specs occasionally raining down on them. Parts of the wall were missing plaster, revealing the skeletal wood beams beneath. Bits of paper floated down the tile floor with its patterns of flowers laid out in white and Sienna. The beams of their flashlight splashed back from the floor, washing over the tattered walls and glittered on the metal doorknobs. There were only two ways to go from there, left down to the central room of the hospital, or down the ever-stretching dim hall to the right.

  "Where to now, Cherry?"

  "We need locate the basement, that's where they would store the paperwork we need. Iris said that according to Cyrus, they kept all the medical examiner's notes and paperwork in the morgue. Which means," Charlotte looked around, swinging her light from side to side. "We have to find a set of doors which lead to the stairwell. Normally they have at least one in each wing since they are used as a fire escape, so let's head right."

  "Why not left?" Zack stole a longing glance at the open space a few feet away from them. "Wouldn't the main part of the building have a stairwell as well?"

  "I don't know. Something is pulling me to the right. Plus, we have less chance of someone spotting us if we stay away from the central hub."

  "Fine, we'll go down the long creepy hall, which makes my skin crawl. You check the doors on the right, I'll try the ones on the left."

  Walking down the corridor, they opened the doors one by one, looking into the various rooms without finding a stairwell. Their muffled footfalls echoed through the hollow space, bouncing off the walls to sound like waterfalls. Somewhere in the darkness a rustling of papers and clanging of chairs, along with a monotonous patter of dripping water called to them. Turning off their torches, a faint light flickering on the wall, pouring out from a room with an opened door, beckoned them to investigate. Shuffling forward, they leaned around the doorjamb to peer inside.

  Along the wall, on the opposite side of the melting candles, stood a metal tub, filled to the brim with a dark crimson, coagulating liquid. A green-slicked faucet protruding from the tiled wall dripped burgundy drops down, which splashed and splattered in the dark waters below. Above the popping flames of candles and wax pooling on the floor, hung metal chains with hooks clacking against one another with a metallic din. The air inside was hot and suffocating, causing Charlotte's lungs to burn as she stepped around the door to inspect the room beyond. Beside her, Zack turned on his light, the beam of which bounced in his shaking hands as he turned to look at her, his face as pale as the tile on the walls.

  "What's that?"

  "Old hydrotherapy tub, I think."

  "What's with the meat hooks?"

  "I have no clue, but I don't think they are meat hooks, or at least I hope they are not."

  "So, what's in the tub then?"

  "Blood from the looks of it?"

  "Think it's human?"

  "Hard to say." Charlotte took a step into the doorway. "Sure is a lot of it though."

  Standing close to one another, they continued to peer into the room when a loud clatter from behind caused them both to scream and turn to face backward. A tall, metal shelf lay sprawled out across the hallway, spilling shattered glass vials onto the floor. From inside the room from which it fell, something stirred in the shadows, and the beams of their lights swung to reveal the black-eyed Gollum slinking out to sit hunched over behind the shelf. Tilting its head, it curled its blue lips into a sneer with its jagged fangs gleaming in the light. Paralyzed, they watched it slink closer with a yowl of an enormous cat.

  Talking another step over towards them it got ready to pounce when it froze, turned, snarled, and scurried back into the room from which it came. Trembling, they watched the door slam shut on its own behind the creature as if being pulled by an invisible force. Huddling together, Charlotte brought her head up to see the pigman crawling down the hall towards them. Letting out a whimper beside her, Zack turned to run, but she grabbed hold of his wrist and pulled him back as the strange creature got closer.

  When he reached the fallen shelf, the pigman stood erect, letting out soft grunts as it regarded them with his empty eye sockets. There. Charlotte heard his voice in her head as the creature pointed to a narrow hall on the left. Nodding her head, she held tight to Zack as she guided him past the figure clad in a black robe, and into the suffocating corridor.

  The floor slanted and descended at an angle, leading down into the hospital's underbelly. She realized they probably used this before the days of elevators to wheel bodies down to the morgue and tightened her grip on Zack’s sweaty hand. Craning her head to glance behind her shoulder, she noted the pigman was gone. They were alone again. Squeezing her flashlight, she pointed it forward, and headed down the path laid out before them.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” —Joseph Conrad

  S naking their way down to the hospital basement, they followed the path laid out for them by the brick, pipe-lined walls. Water sloshed under their feet as the beams from the flashlights skated across the onyx surface and bounced off the water-slicked walls. Aside from the pitter patter of water in the distance, no other sound echoed through the desolate hall. The walls were unmarked by vandals and the only indication of where they should go, were the paper-thin arrows etched into the brick with chalk. Rounding the corner in the direction of one such marker, they wound up in front of a set of unassuming double doors with dodenakker, scribbled above them.

  Puzzled, Charlotte wondered if they meant the word as an indication of what this place was, or a warning meant to keep people out. Either way, she figured, this must have been the place they had been looking for. Pushing both doors open, she stepped over the threshold lined with salt into a pitch-black room covered in white tile. Blinded by darkness, she swept the beam of her flashlight past the metal lockers used to store bodies and stopped at a blood-gummed metal table. She knew they had used it for autopsies, but to see one still crusted over with blood was both unusual and unsettling at the same time.

  "Hey, what's this?"

  Charlotte turned to look at Zack crouching beside a blood-slicked glass jar with two silk tubes coming out from the top.

  "A vintage device used by morticians to drain blood from the body. I saw the modern-day version at the morgue of the new hospital."

  "Now, I'm no medical expert, but isn't this a tad unusual for a morgue in a hospital?"

  "Maybe, hard to say what is and isn't normal in a small island town. For all we know, their medical examiner also doubles as the mortician. Besides," she glanced back at the doors they came through, "aren't you going to question the line of salt on the threshold?"

  "That's used to keep evil out." Zack stood up and looked at her. "I'm surprised you don't know this. Superstition has it, that evil spirits can't cross a line of salt."

  "Okay, so are they trying to keep these spirits in, or out?"

  "Out... I hope, but let's look around in case it's the other way around."

  Agreeing with Zack, Charlotte went to dig in one corner of the room while he searched the other. She had no idea what she was looking for; a death certificate, notebook, anything to give them even the slightest hint as to what was happening on the island. Coming across a stack of photographs, she flipped through them. In each one was a man in a doctor's coat with round spectacles and a curly handlebar mustache who was in the company of a tall, slender woman with her face scratched out. She was pondering what could have transpired between the two people to cause the destruction of the photos when Zack called out to her from the opposite corner.

  "Hey Cherry, come look at this."

  "What is it?"

  "A ledger of some kind. Your friend wasn't kidding when she said no one lives here."

  Getting up, she walked ov
er to where he was standing and took the black, leather-bound book out of his hands, running her finger down the brown, water-stained pages.

  "Huh, that's strange. This says this person came in for a stubbed toe and died of blood poisoning. How is that even possible?"

  "I don't know. But look at all of these. These people came in for minor ailments and wound-up dead." Zack points out the names written on the pages. "Now, I am no doctor, but something tells me you don't come in for diarrhea and end up dead of cholera, at east not in today’s day and age. And what's with the numbers at the end, in the column marked extracted."

  "Hmmm... 5L, 4.5L, 5.6L. They all seem to correspond with the amount of blood in a human body in liters, but surely it can't be."

  "Why not?" Zack turned to peer behind him. "Isn't that what that thing over there is used for?"

  "Yes... but why would they be recording it like that, and what is the blood used for?"

  "I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's used for that tub upstairs."

  "You suggesting we have our own Elizabeth Báthory on this island?"

  "Well, it's either that, or we are dealing with the real Count Dracula, and he just happens to lap up the blood from the tub like a dog."

  "I wouldn't be surprised if we were dealing with something Clive Barker dreamed up." Charlotte snorted. "And look at this, these strange deaths only happen every five years, and only for three weeks between August and September."

  "Let me see that." Zack took the ledger out of her hands and flipped through the pages. "You're right, and, if I did the math correctly, the next cycle is... now."

  "Indeed, this is all really peculiar, I wonder what it all means."

  Looking over the pages, thinking about the numbers, Charlotte was oblivious to the world around her until a faint noise coming from near the cooling lockers caused her to pause as she attempted to pinpoint where it was coming from. It was faint, as if someone was running something sharp on the wall, or across the floor. Looking up, she noticed one of the steel doors had been closed, revealing a black cross painted on its surface that she had not seen when they first entered. Walking over to it, she opened the door and pointed her light inside. A small mound of grout gathered on the bottom of the blemished tray, while the rest continued to cascade down like some gray snow from above.

  Trailing her beam up, she spotted a tile which seemed to be loose in the wall, raining dust down from where it had been lodged. Picking at the cracked white square, she allowed it to drop with a clang that echoed through the locker and peered into the deep hole behind it. Something peered back at her from the dark crevice it had been hidden in, a parchment, rolled up tight from prying eyes. Pulling out the paper, she realized it was made of skin, but whose skin it was, she dared not consider.

  "What you got there?"

  "I'm not sure," Charlotte unfurled the dried flesh and stole a glance at the crude picture scribbled on it in black ink. "It appears to be a map of some kind."

  "A map? Let me see."

  Pulling out the tray of the locker, Charlotte laid out the skin and allowed Zack to take a closer look while she directed the beam of her flashlight at it.

  "This looks like a map of this island."

  "That's because it is. Look, here is the lighthouse, the hotel, and we are here, at the old hospital."

  "What's with the little red 'X' at the center? Think it could be a treasure?"

  "Maybe. Want to go and find out?"

  "How? We don't even know where to start."

  "I know where to start, can't you read a map, Zack? Just look, it's at the center of the woods that lie between Lighthouse Point, the hotel, and the hospital."

  "The Autumn Falls Triangle?"

  "I suppose we can call it that. Well, shall we go explore?"

  Zack opened his mouth to object, but he never got the chance to reply to her. A loud clang coming from somewhere above them caused them to jump with a yelp, as faint footsteps ambled towards them, clacking rhythmically on the tiled floors above. The overlaying echoes rolling back to them sounded like harsh whispers spelling impending doom. Whoever was upstairs would catch them sneaking around at any moment, and Charlotte realized they were in danger even before she broke the uncomfortable silence.

  "Who do you think that is?"

  "No clue, and I don't want to find out. Let's get out of here, and after we regroup with your friends, we can figure out what to do next."

  "We must find another way out; we can't risk getting caught by going back the way we came from."

  "And where do you suggest we go? Can’t you see we are trapped here?"

  Darting her head about the morgue, Charlotte was getting ready to admit he was right when the scraping of metal on tile behind her caused her heart to stop. Spinning around, a steel bookshelf swung itself open, grinding to a halt to reveal a dark, brick-lined tunnel concealed behind it. The invisible force which showed them the map was now guiding them out of the hospital. Stepping inside the opening, she placed her hand on the metal pipe running down one side and felt Zack grab hold of her shoulder and pull her back.

  "What the hell is this?"

  "It's an old tunnel for transporting bodies, if I was to take a guess. It should come out to where the cemetery is supposed to be. Let's go find out."

  "You aren't seriously suggesting we go down that way, do you?"

  "You got any better suggestions?" She tilted her head to look back at him. "If we stay here, we'll get caught. If we go back, we'll get caught. I can hear them coming closer to the doors as we waste time arguing. This is our only chance of escape, unless of course you want to see what’s going to come through those doors."

  "Damn it! I hate it when you're right."

  "Okay, turn your light off, stay close, and follow the pipe."

  Stepping into the tunnel, she guided her hand along the slick metal tube while watching her footing on the crooked brick floor. A few feet in, and she heard the double doors creak open, followed by a shrill holler coming from behind. Zack's hand trembled on her shoulder as the ice crystals formed in her blood. Whoever was behind them seemed unable to cross the barrier of salt placed on the threshold. She was not sure how long it would hold the person or thing in place, but she didn't wish to find out and picked up her pace, tripping on raised bricks as she shuffled along.

  Before long, a crisp sulfur breeze rushed past her, making her shiver, and she could see a faint hint of grayish-blue light ahead of them. Running through the narrow opening, they found themselves in a field of stones bearing nothing more than a number. The surrounding air stunk of rotten eggs and a fissure in the ground just beyond the cemetery billowed black smoke into the air. A groan escaped from the crack. It sounded pained and angry, and the earth quaked beneath them. A voice came after the shock, rising from the ground, telling them to run.

  Heading its advice, she grabbed hold of Zack's hand and set off down the hill at a sprint without turning to look back. Following the shoreline to the spot where they parked, they drove home with their map, without running into the person, or creature who was at the hospital with them.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  “Why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what's on the other side? ”—George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

  S itting in the floral wing back chair by the crackling fireplace of the great room, Charlotte watched Chuck pace around the room as Zack recounted their adventure at the old hospital. The fire did little to warm the room with the broken window and Iris sat beside her, shaking half from the chill blowing in through the empty panes, and half from the fear of what they uncovered.

  Sipping the tea from her mug, Charlotte turned her gaze out the window where clouds of gray gathered again, and inklings of thunder grumbled in the distance. The weather did not seem to be letting up; they would have to brave the storm to sail off the island. Putting her blue and gold porcelain cup on the table beside her, she turned her attention to her partner, wonderin
g what vessel would aid them in their escape, or their death, depending on how strong the storm was.

  "So, Chuck, did you ever find a boat for us?"

  "Yes. Found a good old lobster boat. It ain't much, and it will be rough going to the mainland in this mess, but I think the old girl can make it. We'll go as soon as you’re ready."

  "I still want to check out the location printed on the map Cherry found."

  "Dude, are you insane? We need to get off this island... like yesterday."

  "Zack's right. Someone gave us this map for a reason. The least we can do is check it out and find out why."

  "You wouldn't be saying that if you knew what I knew."

  "And what's that?"

  "That they have replaced us."

  "Replaced? How?"

  "I'll tell you how. I found this out when I went back to the station house to grab my bag. First, the place was deserted, and inside it looked like no one had been there in years. The dust had to have been five inches thick. Anyway, I went up to the lockers, and to my surprise, I found they were no longer ours. They had different name tags on them, an L. Fitzgerald and an H. Looman." Charles shot a glance at Iris. "I checked out your office next, and your desk tag was gone too. They have found replacements for all of us."

  "But..." Iris stuttered, "how could they possibly know we were leaving?"

  "I don't think we are leaving." Charlotte leaned back in her chair. "I don't think they ever meant for us to leave, at least not alive."

  "Then that means... oh my God, "Iris turned pale, "they were planning to kill us all along. That's why they brought us here, isn't it? That's why we all got the same strange call at around the same time."

  "Afraid so doll. Although I want to know why. There has to be a reason they chose the three of us. It's not like there isn't enough fresh meat on this island, and they actually had to go hunting for Charlotte since she doesn't use social media like we do."