Haunting and Scares Collection

by Rosemary Cullen

  At the stairway, she found one set of stairs going up with sunlight at the top of the stairs. The other set went down into graduated darkness. Bria leaned forward towards the flight going down and listened. She thought she could hear the echo of water dripping.

  Stepping away from the flight of stairs that went down, she took that set of stairs to the second floor. She kept her ears keen and the knife in her hand. She walked softly and silently and listened all the time for any sound that could be the old man or his dog. But she knew she had nowhere else to go. This had to lead to a way out.

  Chapter 7

  The stairs came out into another wide corridor. This one had many doors lining each side. Bria knew the direction she needed to go to get to the front of the building but every door she tried led to a room. Some were bigger and some were smaller. Some were simple closets or store rooms containing nothing more than a few shelves.

  Bria opened the door to another room. Her heart jumped as she saw a skeleton hanging from a stand. Her hand tightened its grip on the knife. She chided herself for being so skittish. “How are you going to deal with that hound if a skeleton is enough to scare you?” she asked herself. She poked her tongue out at the skeleton and closed the door.

  Working her way from one door to the next Bria found a room with a window at the front of the hospital. She ran to it feeling as if freedom was close. Reaching the window her heart sank as she realized it was made of the same strengthened glass as the windows on the first floor.

  Bria pressed her face to the glass and tried to see along the front of the building and see a way out. She remembered back to the night before and that the front of the building was floor upon floor of high glass windows. Everyone had looked in intact. And if all were toughened glass she was not going to be able to smash her way through. The best way out would be a fire escape on the side of the building or at the rear.

  But Bria had no idea how big this building was. She had only explored a small portion of the front side of the building. And there were so many floors.

  Bria went back to one of the rooms she’d seen that had a chair in it. She dropped into it and leaned forward to put her head in her hands. The hard floor of last night’s fitful sleep had left her cold and poorly rested. She felt a wave of tiredness wash over her. It was still early.

  If she had still been at home she would probably have still been in bed. But she wasn’t at home. She was free now, free from all that. Bria looked around the small room. There was only one door with a narrow glass window above. Bria pushed the door closed and checked how dark the room was with the door closed. Just enough light came through that window for her to see. Bria took her chair and slid it up against the door, blocking it and securing the room against whoever might try and get in. And then, satisfied that she was safe she sat in the chair and let her eyes close. She would find a way out, she had no doubt, but she would be able to search more of this hospital and find the exit after a little rest. It had been a long cold night and a busy morning. She pulled her jacket closer to her and settled into the chair.

  “Just a snooze,” she told herself. “I probably won’t even sleep. Just rest my eyes.” And she let her eyes rest just for a short while and just for long enough to gather her strength. She was getting out of this building today.

  Chapter 8

  Bria knew she was dreaming. Bria knew she needed to wake up. Some part of her was screaming for her to wake up and find a way out of this maze. Another part of her was being chased by a dog. She ran along one corridor after another, each one looking exactly the same as the last. She was running. She was free. She was trapped. She was chased by the dog that snarled at her to do her chores and her homework and to wash up and tidy her room.

  Bria ran through a door. It was the front door of her house and she ran to her room. But in her dream her old bedroom was a hospital ward with posters of her internal organs and bones and feelings on the walls.

  And she was trapped in her old bed with medical staff swarming around her.

  “Where are you?” one young doctor asked.

  “I can’t see her,” said another with the voice of her mother.

  “What do you think she can see?” asked another doctor who crowded in on her, pressing closer and closer to her face.

  Another doctor, taller and louder than the rest, pushed forward through the crowd of doctors. His face was hard and angry, but invisible to Bria. She squirmed and fought to get away from him but she was bound to her bed that had become a bare frame of a hospital bed. And the doctor smiled at her with black teeth. And then he asked her in a voice that was heard in her heart and soul but not her ears.

  “What is it like to be dead?”

  Bria woke. Cold. Scared. The dim light from the small window had faded. The room was filled with dark corners. Bria stood up from her chair and pushed it away from the door. She took a bite of candy and opened the door.

  “Must have been a dream,” she said to herself before walking out of the room. She was rested now. She wasn’t going to sleep in this place again. It was time to go. Time to find the next town. Time to get some proper food.

  “Plenty of daylight left,” she said. “And if the worst comes to the worst I can always go back to that town and find something good to eat.

  Bria turned another corner into another corridor. Now she was sure she was losing her way. The corridor was dark and littered with abandoned hospital equipment. A wheelchair lay on its side half way down the corridor and a medical screen stood against one wall. It was the mobile kind that nurses would put around a patient’s bed. Bria thought she saw a shadow flickering on it from the other side.

  Bria looked back the way she had come. That corridor was similar to others she’d seen but now she was sure she had not walked along it before. Cleary the dark corridor was the wrong way. She would have to turn back and retrace her steps. She was sure shed find that stairway down to the first floor. Maybe she could find something to help her smash open that main door.

  The next corridor was brighter than the last. Bria guessed she was moving back towards the front of the building. Those tall windows at the front of the building were letting lots of daylight flood into the building. It was darker the deeper into the building she went.

  Bria saw a shaft of light streaming along a corridor up ahead. Just around the corner was the tall window. She turned the corner and realized she was now utterly lost. The window she found was not one at the front of the building. It was smaller. It stood at the end of a corridor. She had not been here before. She looked this way and that for any hint of the way out.

  On all the walls Bria could see the markings where signs had once been. They had all been removed. Some would have no doubt pointed the way out. This place was a maze and she was stuck in it.

  The Bria heard a bang. Deep in the hospital somewhere there was someone making a noise. Maybe it was a banging door. Bria’s imagination fuelled by frustration and fear at being lost conjured up even more horrific images of what might be making that noise. She stopped herself form shouting out. She tried to calm herself.

  “It’s just the wind blowing a door closed,” she told herself. “Or maybe it’s that old creep.”

  Again another bang.

  Bria backed away from the noise. She turned away from the window at the corridor’s dead end and ran along it hoping she would find stairs down.

  Again Bria came to the end of a corridor. Doors on either side had round windows set in them and she could see one empty room after another. And then she came across a large open room with seats arranged as if in a theatre. It was a lecture theatre. It must be a place where visiting academics or senior staff gave talks about some new treatment of other.

  Bria saw at the opposite end of the theatre another doorway. There was light on the other side. “There might be a way. There must be a way through.” Bria convinced herself she should try that way. She pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  High above the center of t
he theater was a glass dome. It was broken in several places and light streamed through to light the theater. Several panes of glass remained in place. They were grubby and let little light through.

  Bria splashed through a puddle on the floor. The rain had poured through during the night. The floor was covered in a shallow puddle. She splashed across it towards the other exit.

  As she crossed the theatre shadows moved across the seats. The angle of light coming through the glass dome above and her movement across the space created new shadows with every step. She looked nervously as one shadow dipped behind a seat and another rose up from the next.

  “Only shadows,” she said. “And we only have shadows because we have light.” It was something she said to give herself courage but hidden in the comment was the fact that the sun would be setting and soon there would be no light. She was lost deep in the hospital. She had no light of her own. Once the sun set there would be nothing but shadow. Darkness and loneliness. Bria picked up the pace. She needed to get out. She needed to find a door. She would be damned if she was going to spend another night in this cursed place. She would go back to the town and hand herself and the stolen bicycle over to the police. They would arrest her and put her in a cell. She would be given food and she would be safe.

  Bria heard a door banging and a splashing noise far behind her. Her heart jumped and she ran. Someone was following her. Follow me all the way to town if you like, she thought. I’m getting out of here.

  Chapter 9

  It was easy to run blindly into the maze of corridors. Sure she could run but did she know where she was going? She’d always been so sure of what to do but now she was a rat in a maze, a headless chicken running in circles.

  The corridor she was moving along now had lots of doors. These were all small rooms and every one had a small peephole. Bria stopped at one with the door standing open slightly. There was a tattered padded floor and walls and a small window high up on the back wall. This window was a series of glass bricks. She could not see out through it but light managed to force its way through and to light the small padded room.

  All along the corridor were the same doors, with the same peepholes looking in to the same padded cell. The next one was shut. Bria looked in through the peephole. In the gloom of the small padded room she saw on the floor an old man in a dark and heavy coat with a dog curled up next to him.

  Bria pulled away from the door. He was asleep, she though. Or maybe dead? Or maybe there are more of these creepy old guys with dogs hanging around this place. She stepped back to the door to take another look and to check if it was the same hobo who had blocked her escape this morning.

  She placed her eye to the peephole. The old guy was sitting up and looking out at her.

  “Are you still here too?” he asked.

  Bria was running before she knew.

  The corridors on this floor were littered with abandoned equipment. There were bedpans and small steel dishes scattered across the floor. There were more wheelchairs and gurneys strewn about the corridor.

  She danced past one and then another and they barely slowed her. She heard a crashing behind her as if someone had tripped over some of the kicked a steel dish and sent it clattering across the floor. Bria burst through a doorway and prayed that there was another door out.

  She bumped into a gurney that lay abandoned in the small room. There was a work top that ran around the room and underneath it a series of small cupboards all at knee height. Some were shut but the doors hung open on most. Bria thought she might be able to climb inside and hide. She tried. She climbed in and tried the grab hold of the small door to pull it shut on her.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Bria looked up and out of her little cupboard. In the round window of the door was the bearded face of the old man. He looked at Bria and waved.

  “Don’t climb in there,” he said. “You might get trapped.”

  “Stay away from me,” Bria yelled. “Just you stay away.”

  The door opened slightly and the black snout of the dog pushed into the room. His mouth was open, his tongue lolling out of one side. The dog looked at Bria with brown, gold flecked eyes and panted.

  “Toby. Stay,” the old man commanded. He reached in and took hold of the spotted handkerchief that was tied around the dog’s neck. “Young lady don’t want you slobbering all over her.”

  Bria looked at the dog and then up to the old man. “Why are you following me?”

  “I’m not following you,” he said with a quiet voice. “I’m looking for my pipe. Why are you in here?”

  “I was sheltering from the rain,” she said.

  “Well, this is my floor, and that was my little room. You might find a better shelter on the upper floors.”

  The old man pulled the dog out of the room and let the door swing shut. Bria clambered out of the cupboard and stood up. “How can I get out of here?” she asked.

  She looked through the round window. The old man was gone. She dashed to the door and opened it. “Hello?” she called along the empty corridor. “How do I get out?” She called. “Hello,” she shouted. “Tell me how to get out of here.”

  *

  Bria had run along one corridor and then back to run along another looking for the old man. She called out, shouting, begging for the old man to take her out of here. But he had gone. She flung open one door after another calling out into each room. One room was bare, another littered with gurneys. The next room had a single chair.

  The next was an old waiting room with several chairs. This room had a table at the center with office chairs placed around it, some tipped over. The last room contained a wheelchair and a child’s rocking horse. Bria looked the rocking horse in its chipped painted eyes before closing the door. The latch closed with a loud click.

  Bria leaned against the wall. She slid down to the floor. She was sweating and tired. Her head was spinning and she felt a little sick. “No wonder you are dizzy,” she said to herself and pulled out the half eaten candy bar. “You have missed your lunch.” She took a bite and tucked the rest away for later.

  Bria looked left and right. She had come from one end and had found no way out. At the other end the corridor joined yet another corridor. Climbing to her feet she decided to have a look and see which of the two directions she liked the look of. One might lead her to an exit.

  Both would probably lead her even deeper into the maze. Either way she couldn’t stay where she was. It was definitely getting darker. It must be close to evening. She didn’t want to run around this place in the dark. It was creepy enough already.

  When Bria stepped up to the junction she saw it was a short corridor. There were no doors. There were no windows. The corridor’s only feature was the two stairways. At one end of the corridor was a stairway going down. The other a stairway heading up. Bria wanted to go down and get closer to that main hall and the main doorway, and a way out of this place.

  She couldn’t be sure it led anywhere near the main door. She could just as easily end up further away than she was now. The stairway leading up looked more inviting, even though it would definitely take her further from the main entrance hall. But there was a weak light streaming down. There were windows up there. Maybe she would be able to have a look out and try and get her bearings. Feeling comforted by the sight of sunlight she headed towards the stairway up.

  Chapter 10

  The stairs came out in a corridor different to the others Bria had been walking and running along. There were tall windows on two sides and Bria realized she was in corner of the hospital and on the uppermost floor. The area around the corridor was divided into offices with glass dividing walls, some with blinds still hanging.

  The floor had once been carpeted. Now it was a dirty and tattered covering but it did absorb a lot of the echoing noise that had been a feature of the rest of the hospital. Bria walked along looking into one office after another. Some desks remained. Some office chairs. Here and there a filing cabin
et.

  Right in the very corner was a large office. Through the windows Bria saw the sun dipping below the trees that surrounded the hospital. The long jagged shadows falling on the windows, orange and red rays of the low sun flaring and glinting off the glass.

  A large chair sat behind the big desk in this office. Bria walked around the desk and dropped into the chair. It was deep and comfortable. The black leather had been warmed by the sun that must have been filling the room for the entire day.

  Swinging back in the chair and putting her feet up on the desk made Bria feel important. She guessed someone very important used to sit here. She pulled out her unwrapped candy bar and finished it off. She swivelled and rocked in the in chair as she chewed.

  There was something about the sunlight and the more comfortable surroundings that settled Bria’s nerves. She felt safe here, even though she knew she was as far from that front door as she could be. But still this was a better place to rest than the hard floored corridors and rooms she had seen so far. The old man might be happy sleeping on the padded floor of his small cell but she wouldn’t be.

  Even if she could find her way back to that corridor she wouldn’t want to stay. They were dark and gloomy and unhappy looking rooms. There was a sense that unhappy people had spent long unhappy hour there. Their pain had seemed to have sunk into the padded walls and floor. The old man might be comfortable there. He might even have been here long enough to know that it was the most comfortable place to sleep. But Bria wasn’t going to be here much longer, she wasn’t planning on staying.

  One unusual feature of the office was the open fire place set against one of the exterior walls. Bria realized this building was old and that the biggest and most important office would have had its own fire.

  “You could have left some coal up here for me,” Bria said as she investigated the fire place.