A brief moment passed before an ear shattering, heart slamming bang rang out from the direction of the three ovens near the rear of the structure.
“What in the hell was that?” Ana questioned.
Syd panned his handheld camera in the direction of the bang though didn’t see anything on the screen. “I’m not picking anything up on the camera. Keep talking.”
Syd could hear Ana gulp and take a deep breath. “Did you just make that noise? Are you trying to communicate with us?” she questioned in a deceptively strong voice that in no way matched the fear on her face.
There was another lengthy pause before another bang.
Syd’s screen still remained clear.
“Are you angry?” Ana asked out of the blue.
Though he couldn’t really see her without the aid of the camera, Syd flashed a look in her direction. “What would make you ask something like that?” he asked.
“Well if I were banging something around like that it wouldn’t be because I was a happy camper,” she explained as calmly as she could.
The air around them grew suddenly stagnant and thick.
“Can you feel this?” Ana asked.
“Yes,” Syd said evenly then panned his camera around. He moved deliberately slow and kept a close eye on the screen as what appeared to be thousands of orbs started circling around both he and Ana. “Keep talking.”
“Can you tell us why you were here?” Ana asked. “Were you here during the plague or were you a patient at Dr. Klaus’s asylum?”
Syd continued to film as the orbs continued to circle them. Most times, at least ninety-nine percent of the time, an orb turned out to be dust or a bug flying in front of the camera, but this was different. There was no longer a draft blowing through the structure that Syd could feel and he and Ana were still, so they weren’t kicking anything up into the air. The orbs had quite literally come from nowhere and had coincided with Ana’s questions and the bangs. This just might be the one percent of the time when the orbs actually mean something, Syd thought.
“I can understand why you might be angry,” Ana said with her voice calming just a bit, though it was still tight. “Neither scenario appeals to me either. It seems that no matter what the reason for coming to this island, it wasn’t likely that you were going to leave alive. I can’t imagine why you would want to hang around after all these years though,” she continued, “There are better places to be no matter what your life may have been like before.”
The orbs continued to circle around them, increasing in their numbers as the air around them grew even heavier.
“I don’t feel so good Syd,” Ana said suddenly. “I need to get out of here.”
Syd understood and while he would have liked to have stayed, he knew that she needed to go. Of the two of them, Ana was surrounded by more of the orbs and if they were spirits of some kind, they could have easily been drawing from her energy…at least that was the theory.
Still, he wanted to document the orb activity and with no stationary cameras set up in the crematorium he had to do it by leaving his own handheld behind.
Before setting the camera down on a crumbling countertop not too far from where he’d been standing he checked the battery; two hours left. That should be enough.
Syd set the camera down and headed for Ana.
“I’ve got you,” he said as he found her feet with his flashlight and reached out to her. “Come on.”
Syd held onto Ana’s arm as they headed out of the crematorium and into the fresh night air. Almost immediately after passing through the door, Ana’s strength started to return and she was steadier on her feet.
Syd helped her to a bench that sat along the path that led up to the main hospital where she slumped down with relief. “What happened?” he asked, though he figured that he already knew.
Ana took a deep breath of the fresh air and seemed to relax a bit. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I was talking, doing the EVPs when I suddenly felt completely drained. It took every ounce of strength I had not to lay down on the ground and curl up into a ball and go to sleep.”
Though Syd had expected something similar to her story he still didn’t like it. For any entity to sap a living soul’s energy so quickly and freely meant that any one of them could be in danger if any of them headed back inside, especially if they were alone. Still, he didn’t want to alarm Ana at the moment; he wanted to hear the recording and see what the camera showed before he said anything.
“Let’s head back to the cottage and grab a soda and one of the leftover muffins Isis made for breakfast this morning. After that, we’ll head to the doctors’ offices and see if we can’t pick up something there.”
In the light of the nearly full moon Syd could see that she wasn’t entirely thrilled with the idea, though he wasn’t sure which part bothered her the most; the leaving or the coming back part. Still, she rose to her feet and steadied herself before they headed out.
Syd couldn’t stop himself from taking one last look back at the crematorium before following Ana down the path. The feeling that they were assaulted by more than one entity, possibly thousands if the orbs were any indication, was frightening. Regardless of the worry he felt, he couldn’t wait to retrieve the camera and listen to the recorder. In spite of all that had happed in the last week, this might be the best evidence yet.
Lorenzo l’Ospedale Psichiatrico – fourth floor – 1:30am…
Tony sat at one end of the capacious atrium with a handheld IR while Saph sat at the other end with a handheld thermal camera. So far they had been there for at least half an hour talking and waiting for something to happen, though they hadn’t heard so much as the scurrying feet of a rat running by. It was utterly silent and still, and Saph was bored to tears. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she could have seen the room, but most of the windows were busted out and boarded up, though moonlight did manage to stream in from the far end of the room, near Tony. In that scant light, she could see that he was about as thrilled with the investigation of the fourth floor as she was.
“How much longer are we going to sit here and wait?” she asked as patiently as her boredom would allow.
Tony didn’t answer right away and for a moment Saph thought that he might have gone to sleep. “Just a few more minutes,” he said finally. “It was reported that the doctor hung himself somewhere between one and two in the morning while the nurses were occupied in one of the patient’s rooms. I want to stay in this area until two, just to make sure we don’t miss anything.”
That wasn’t exactly the answer Saph wanted to hear and she let out an exasperated sigh.
A sudden bang down the west hall drew Saph’s attention. “Did you hear that?” Saph asked, though she couldn’t see how he could have missed it.
“It sounded like it came from the therapy ward,” Tony confirmed and stood. “Come on.”
“I thought that you wanted to stay here in case something happened,” she sniped as she rose to her feet.
She wasn’t often short with Tony, or any of the others for that matter, but they could have been walking around and investigating the entire time they were up there instead of sitting on their asses.
Tony led and they both watched their step as they walked around debris that had once been part of the ceilings or walls, or more ordinary objects such as chairs, IV poles or other items that had been left behind and now littered the halls.
Another bang and some scratching noises increased their pace to the end of the hall and through the doors that read “La Terapia di Salute Mentale” and below it the English translation, “Mental Health Therapy”.
A chill ran up Saph’s spine when they passed through the doors. There was a definite temperature change that the thermal camera confirmed. “Where do you think it was coming from?” she asked.
As if on cue, another bang echoed throughout the ward. “I guess this way,” Tony said then cautiously led the way further down the hall.
The banging took th
em to a set of doors that read “Elettroshock Terapia” and a smaller translation below it that read “Electroshock Therapy”.
“Joy,” Saph mumbled as Tony opened the door and pointed the handheld inside. Like the stationary IR cameras, the handhelds filmed in infrared also, turning the dark room into a gray shaded photograph. “Do you feel this?” she asked as she stepped inside the first room. The hairs on her neck tickled as if they were standing on edge and her skin crawled.
“Definitely,” Tony confirmed then pulled out his EMF reader. “Holy shit,” he cursed.
“What is it?” Saph questioned as she rushed to Tony’s side as quickly as the surrounding conditions would allow.
Tony waved the EMF detector around the room and eventually concentrated on the empty air in the center of the room above the therapy bed. “Check out the reading,” he said.
Saph looked at the illuminated reading and caught her breath. “A hundred and three?” she questioned instead of stated. “That can’t be right.”
Tony slowly waved the detector around the room and still came up with the reading only above the table. “There’s got to be something here causing this,” he said.
“Is there a breaker box in here somewhere? Or some unshielded wiring?” Saph asked as she flashed her light around the room but found nothing.
“No,” Tony said after a brief pause. “Whatever it is has to be in this immediate area. This is where the field is located.”
Saph flashed her light up to the ceiling and to an old, disintegrating cable hanging down from it. “Could this be it?” she asked.
Tony looked up and held the reader up to it. In the dim shadow of the flashlight she could see him shake his head. “No spike,” he said then lowered the meter towards the bed. “The field is here,” he said as he waved his hand only inches above the bed. “Look for anything around the bed, either on or under it. Something’s got to be here for the reading to get this high.”
Both Tony and Saph searched the bed from top to bottom, going so far as to moving it to look at the floor underneath and found nothing. More confounding than that, was that in the time of their search, the reading plunged as low as the base reading of point-zero-two before rocketing back up to a hundred and three.
“This is insane,” Saph complained.
“I agree,” Tony said. “We’ll have to make a note of it and search this place again in the morning when it’s lighter in here.”
Even though it was dark and unless Tony flashed a light in her direction he couldn’t see her, but Saph nodded anyway.
“Come on,” he said, his voice deep with unease, “let’s head back to the atrium.”
Saph turned and immediately sucked in a breath as she stumbled back into Tony.
“What is it?” Tony asked as he caught her and held her for a moment until she regained her balance.
Saph was in shock and for a moment she had to blink herself back to the present. “I-I swear I just saw the outline of someone pass in front of me and head towards the door,” she said.
Tony was quiet for a moment and Saph knew what he was thinking.
“It wasn’t a figment of my imagination and it wasn’t any kind of light playing tricks on me. Hell, it wasn’t even out of the corner of my eye Tony, it was directly in front of me. There was someone else here. I saw it,” she insisted then realized how cold she’d suddenly grown and gasped again. “I felt it.”
Tony hesitated again then gave her a reassuring squeeze on her shoulder. “Do you think that you might have caught it on the thermal?” he asked.
Saph had forgotten that she was holding the thermal camera and looked down just to find that the screen was dark. At first she wondered if she had turned it off and forgotten about it, but after trying several times unsuccessfully to turn it on, she realized that the battery was dead.
“Are you sure that it was fully charged when we picked it up?” Tony asked.
Saph remembered the last time a battery died on them and she didn’t want a repeat of the incident. “I’m sure,” she insisted firmly, and she was, and Tony didn’t argue. They both knew that for the investigation tonight, every piece of equipment was fully charged before heading out.
Tony looked down at his watch and illuminated the face to see the clock. With a thin-tipped, black pen he marked the time on the back of his hand as he did every time he wanted to review a specific piece of footage. So far there were only two times written down; the time they heard the first bang down the therapy corridor and the time the activity started in the shock therapy rooms.
“Now let’s get back to the atrium before something happens there that we miss,” Tony said and gave her a slight nudge in the direction of the door.
She didn’t need it. The sooner she got out of that room the better. It wasn’t that the idea of shock therapy that disturbed her so much as the simple fact that she didn’t want to be there; as a student of psychology she understood the whys, but there was such a heavy feeling of fear and despair in that room that she almost felt as though she was the one who had been strapped to the old, crumbling bed being shocked herself.
Saph couldn’t relax or shake the chills from her body even after they reached the atrium. It seemed that the feeling of heaviness had blanketed the entire floor of the hospital.
A sudden scream had both Tony and Saph running down to the east end of the floor. Only standard rooms were at the east end of the floor and no real activity had ever been reported from that section but both Saph and Tony knew what they’d heard. Thankfully there was a thermal at that end of the fourth floor that would catch anything out of the ordinary; or so they hoped.
Of course, when they reached the end of the corridor they couldn’t see anything; it was as dark as the rest of the hospital, but there was a definite feeling about the place and it wasn’t a good one.
“Oh shit!” Tony suddenly gasped when he looked into the last room on the left, which made Saph jump.
“What?” she blasted.
“You’ve got to see this,” Tony insisted.
Saph could see the glow of his handheld and followed the light until she reached him and took a look at the screen. “Oh my God,” she gasped herself. “What the hell?”
When she looked at the screen she could barely believe her eyes, in fact, if she hadn’t seen it herself and had to take someone’s word for it she wouldn’t have believed it. In the center of the room was what looked like a scene right out of a movie. In a conical stack in the center of the room were a dozen chairs of varying shapes and sizes, which reached from the floor to the ceiling.
“Were these like this earlier?” Saph questioned.
Tony shook his head and flashed his light around the room to see that there were no other entrances inside, and like much of the hospital even the windows were boarded up. “I don’t think so, if they were Matt or Jorden would have said something.”
“Are you so sure?” Saph scornfully questioned, though wished she hadn’t. She knew that Tony and Jorden were as close as siblings.
Tony surprised her when he didn’t jump down her throat, but he remained firm when he stated, “Matt and Jorden had their reasons for not wanting to tell us about Jonas and what his partners had done. I don’t agree with their decision but they didn’t do it to deceive us, and they would never do something like this. I’ve known them both for a long time and once you get to know them better you’ll understand that something like this is beyond their motivation. All they’ve ever wanted is the truth.”
“Yet they kept it from us,” Saph gently argued.
She knew that Tony was disappointed in the situation, in spite of the fact that he continued to defend what they did, and would continue to do so until he was in the grave. “Like I said, I don’t agree with what they did, but I do understand it. And what they did was nowhere near this,” he said and zoomed the camera in on the conical structure.
As Saph got a closer look she understood that neither Matt nor Jorden, nor anyone else on the is
land could have done that, at least not without a great deal of time and resources on their hands. For anyone to put the stack together it would have taken a couple of hours and a lot of tools, not to mention the noise and all they heard was a scream.
“What do you think will happen if I pull out one of the chairs near the middle of the structure?” Saph questioned.
“I think that it will fall,” Tony said then added, “and I think that you should.”
His tone was serious, which told Saph that he wasn’t joking and she carefully approached the structure.
“Make sure you get out of the way quickly. We don’t need any of those things falling down on you,” Tony warned as she reached out.
Saph kept as much distance as she could between herself and the structure then as she said she would, she pulled away one of the chairs about halfway up the structure. As suspected, the structure crashed down and Saph barely jumped out of the way before she was knocked in the head by one of the chairs.
“Now what?” Saph asked.
Tony was quiet as he seemed to ponder the question. “Leave it,” he said finally.
“You don’t think that we should at least pick up the chairs?” she questioned.
Tony shook his head. “I don’t think that we have to.”
Tony’s tone was so grave that she started to worry. “What do you think is going to happen?”
Tony shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said grimly. “Come on. Let’s get back to the atrium.”
Saph was left feeling even less at ease as she followed Tony out of the room while he called Jorden on the radio.
“Yeah, what did you need Tony?” Jorden asked calmly.
“We just found something interesting up here and I wanted you to keep a close eye on the thermal on this level.”
“You think you might not be alone up there?” she questioned with some concern.
“To be honest I don’t know what’s going on up here, but I really need you to keep a close eye on us for the rest of the night, especially down at this end,” he said as he looked up in the direction of the stationary camera and waved then pointed at the room where the chair-tree had stood just moments ago. “Especially this room. This is the only way in or out and I want to know if anyone goes in there.”
The Haunting of Isola Forte di Lorenzo Page 22
