The things crouched behind the counter had no interest in pursuing us. Rather, they seemed to be hiding from something themselves and wished to stay out of sight. Jake and Elizabeth both asked me what I'd seen, but as I looked out across the third ward, my stomach dropped.
The sole light along the hall found some stability and began to burn brightly, highlighting in its warm yellow glow the form of a shambling figure. The white gown and black hair were the first features to come to light as the thing lurched towards us, followed by the glint of something it held in its hand.
The cleaver, I realized. Backing into the other two, I reached behind me and sought out the handle to the ward entry door, muttering, “It's coming.”
Jake stood before Elizabeth as if to shield her from the thing which now came down the hall with its jerky, exaggerated movements, but he soon joined me in trying to open the door. For her part, Elizabeth cradled her arms, clutched her shoulders, and stood frozen in terror as the figure lumbered closer.
The door was giving us trouble. The handle was stuck and no matter how we shook it, it wouldn't come loose. I watched as the thing drew nearer. Its footfalls were audible now, but as it left the light behind its features became less clear. Its face—or what could be seen of its face—was the color of ivory. As its hair swayed from side to side, I glimpsed what appeared to be a messy, pasty netting of a face draped over a skeletal frame. Its eyes, one larger than the other, were mere holes packed with shadow. An unusual mouth rounded out its visage, cut unevenly so that it had the look of a lopsided jack-o'-lantern's grin. Its features did not move or shift in any way; these pits of eyes did not blink; the jagged maw did not close.
It's an imitation, was the first thing that came to mind. An imposter. There's nothing human about it at all.
The door clicked, and the three of us all but fell through it.
Light poured into the third ward from the doorway, giving us our best look yet at the approaching figure. With a meat cleaver squeezed tightly within its bony fist, the specter marched directly towards us, its face mercifully obscured by tangles of black hair. It gave the weapon an awkward swing, hacking at the air, and then jerked unnaturally to one side as it began to run. The ward was filled with the smacking sound of its pasty feet as they struck the floor.
The lights above us winked out, and in the next instant the flashlight I held also turned off. No matter how I mashed the power button, it wouldn't come back on.
We were thrust into perfect darkness. Meanwhile, the monstrosity's footfalls were getting closer. Much closer.
Fueled by panic, I took hold of both Jake and Elizabeth's hands and yanked them down the hall. I had no planned route, no idea whether we could hope to outrun the thing, but I tore off into the darkness all the same.
It's just like that night, twenty-eight years ago, I realized. The Third Ward Incident is playing out all over again. Though none among the living could say for sure, I believed that the terrible specter behind us was re-tracing Enid's original route through the asylum.
“W-Where are we going?” asked Jake, his shoulder bumping hard into the wall as I dragged him. He let go of my hand and tried to feel out the features of the hall. In doing so, he nearly tripped all three of us.
“It's happening again,” I blurted. “The Third Ward incident. It's happening again. It's coming for us.” For nearly three decades, the monstrous presence responsible for the killing spree had remained in the building, biding its time. Only now had it gained the power to manifest. I'd been right; our turning up at the asylum on this night had been no coincidence. Something had wanted us here.
We were fated to become the newest victims in a killing spree that had never really ended.
32
We were mice in a maze.
Blind mice.
From behind us there came the steady footfalls of our pursuer. Sometimes they quickened, at other times they slowed, but never once did they completely stop.
This was a life and death situation, and yet none among us had any designs to attempt self-defense. Like Elizabeth had initially claimed, the thing that now shambled through the darkness behind us was not human, and an attack on our part, no matter how coordinated, would never succeed. Confronting the monstrosity in the darkness seemed like a good way to catch the business-end of that cleaver.
And so, we ran.
Elizabeth was hyperventilating, barely able to keep up the pace. She would stop now and then to listen, and would have to be dragged by Jake, who would have outrun me if not for his girlfriend's constant pauses. “It's coming,” she kept saying; and though Jake and I didn't have the least doubt about that, the certainty in her voice as she said it seemed to suggest a nebulous link between her and the specter.
Jake picked her up and slung her over one shoulder, charging forward. Winded, he reached out and grabbed the back of my jacket, asking, “Where are we going to go? How will we know if we're going the right way?”
It was a sensible question, but I was in no position to give a proper answer. At that very moment I wasn't even sure where I was. That certain death or injury might lurk behind any door was a real possibility, but I saw no option but to keep going. Eventually, either we'd find some light and gain our bearings, or the thing would catch up to us.
There was a thud as Jake struck what felt like a metal door. Running his hands across it, he singled out the handle and, when he couldn't open it normally, he began to kick it. I joined in and the lock gave out with the ringing of fallen screws. Taking Elizabeth's hand once more, Jake led the way into this new section, but he didn't get far.
“What the fuck?” Jake hit the ground with a thud, and Elizabeth followed.
“What's wrong?” I asked. I stopped where I was, let the door fall shut behind me. The footsteps were quiet then; we'd bought ourselves a bit of breathing room.
“I tripped...” muttered Jake. He began to right himself, but then I heard him drop back onto the floor, a tortured groan flying from his lips.
“What's wrong?” I asked again. “What happened?” This passage seemed identical to the last one. The air smelled the same, the floor beneath my feet felt the same and there wasn't a hint of light to be seen anywhere. We were in yet another windowless stretch.
Jake rose to his feet and hauled Elizabeth up with him. His voice was tremulous as he finally replied, “A body.”
I inhaled sharply, taking a step back. “A body?”
“I tripped on a body,” he said, his voice reduced to a frightened whisper. “I felt it. I felt it's skin...”
“That can't be.” I edged a few steps down the hall, reaching out into the blackness for Jake or Elizabeth. Our hands met, and we continued ambling down the hall just as the smacking of bare feet sounded outside the door. “We've got to move. Come on.”
In the darkness, I thought I heard Jake sobbing.
We ran for all we were worth down the passage, our feet rattling loose floor tiles along the way. We'd made it about a hundred yards when it was my turn to wipe out on an unseen obstacle. The top of my foot caught something awkwardly and I sailed to the ground, landing face-first. “Son of a bitch!” I started to pick myself up, but in doing so could not avoid groping the object that had caused my fall.
My hand grazed cool flesh.
Springing to my feet, I backed up until I struck the nearest wall and fought a wave of nausea. I'd touched what I could only guess was a human face. The skin had been taut and cold. My palm had pressed down upon what I took for a wide, spongy nose. My fingers had met the edges of both pursed, coarse lips and glassy, staring eyes.
A body.
The second one down this passage.
“Are you OK?” asked Elizabeth from across the hall.
“Another body,” I said. Perhaps we had just encountered the remains of squatters, or perhaps the body I'd just felt had been Terrence's. A third, more convincing explanation came to mind as the footsteps grew in volume down the hall, however. “The victims... Enid murdered thre
e patients and two staff members...”
It seemed that the three of us had been swallowed up into a world where the Third Ward Incident was being actively played out. We had one leg in the present and the other in the past—were subjected to the intense memories that the asylum had held for twenty-eight years.
I shook off my disgust and continued down the hall. “Five people died that night,” I said. “Two of them along this hall, it seems.”
Elizabeth and Jake bumped into me as we kept on. “The dead have been stuck in this building all this time,” she said with a teary edge to her voice. “Their spirits haven't been able to move on because of that thing...”
“Maybe,” I replied, “but I'm not interested in that. We've got to leave before this thing can claim anymore lives.”
“Hold on!” blurted Jake with uncharacteristic excitement. He stopped to empty his pockets and drew out his cell phone. Tapping the screen, the passage was lit by a dim white glow. “Holy shit, I forgot I had this on me.” He squinted at it. “Got enough battery to use the flashlight, at least.” Putting the flashlight on, he allowed himself a sigh of relief and canvassed our surroundings for the first time.
What we saw sent us running faster than ever before.
Some ten feet behind us, rolling onto its stomach, was the body I'd tripped over. Dressed in white scrubs, the figure, a young nurse, turned an ashen face towards us and wheezed, “Please, help me...” She'd been slashed across the neck, and the front of her outfit had turned red with blood. The wound opened and closed as she strained to sit up, its frayed edges puckering like a second mouth and loosing a spray of crimson.
We were in the second ward. This was technically familiar ground to us; we'd visited it briefly before we'd gone looking for Elizabeth in the basement. I combed through my memories of the place and tried to recall the exact route we'd taken to get here with Terrence. With Jake's cell phone pointed directly ahead, we dashed down the empty hall and kept our eyes peeled for another door. A stairwell was what we really needed, and another minute of running saw us discover one across from the second ward's exit, right near the stretch of abandoned doctor's offices.
We piled into the stairwell, taking the steps down two at a time. “What if it doesn't work?” asked Jake, waving the light around us and singling out the door that would—we prayed—admit us to the ground level.
It was true, this building had a way of playing tricks on us. We'd been misled by it all night, had become hopelessly lost despite our best efforts. In the event that the stairwell spit us out anywhere but the first floor, the plan would remain the same, however. Until we'd found a way out, we wouldn't stop.
We barreled through the door and into a section that, with the aid of Jake's light, I thought I recognized. To our right was a metal door marked with a roman numeral I—a portion of the first ward we'd toured earlier. To our left was an unmarked door, which led to a stretch of offices and lounges. “We've been here,” I said. “At least, I think we have. This spot looks familiar. I think we came through here with Terrence.”
Jake agreed. “Yeah, definitely. I remember this place. We were definitely here. If we just go to the left, we'll make our way to the back door.” Without waiting for us to come to a consensus, Jake kicked open the unmarked door to the left and led Elizabeth to the hall full of nursing offices.
There wasn't an office in sight, however.
The hall ahead of us looked an awful lot like the hallway we'd just left behind on the upper level—down to the writhing corpse on the floor. The nurse's blonde curls were matted to her face with blood as she screamed, “Help me!” Jake pulled his light away, leaving the nurse buried in darkness, but still the sounds of her blood-slick hands slapping the floor persisted.
And with them came a smattering of rapid, familiar footfalls.
We reversed our course, slipped through the door and found ourselves again in the hall leading up to the first ward. Jake slumped against the wall, tearing at a fistful of his hair. “I don't get it...” His eyes were red, as were his cheeks. “What's happening to us? This building does whatever it wants. Are we going crazy?” he demanded. “That was the scene we just left upstairs. How is that possible? How? Tell me!”
I looked down the opposite end of the hall, the end that would take us into the first ward, cafeteria and subsequently towards the front entrance. I wandered a few steps from the two of them and tried to understand what was happening to us. “We tried to find our way to the back entrance. But the building didn't like that.” I kneaded my brow with the heel of my palm. “Whatever's calling the shots in this building wants us to go a certain way. That must be it. There's a correct route we're supposed to walk, guys. If we stray from it...” I waved at the unmarked door. “Then it's going to mess with us. Our only option is to go where the building wants us to go.”
“No, fuck that!” shouted Jake. “Why should we? If the building has its way then we're going to walk right into that—that thing!” He wiped at his eyes and tried to keep from breaking down.
Elizabeth stepped out towards the center of the hall and joined me, pointing in the direction of the first ward. “I think that the thing in this building... the presence... wants us to follow the same route Enid took.” She took another step. “Professor, you said that you think the Third Ward Incident is repeating itself, right? Well, maybe this thing wants us to trace the same path, wants us to go the same places Enid did that night. Do you remember where that trail ended?”
I nodded. “They found Enid's body in the front lobby, near the door.” For some reason, the thing in the asylum was herding us towards the front of the building. I couldn't be sure of its reasons for doing so, but that was enough for me to act on. “All right, then. Let's aim for the front lobby. We'll break the goddamn door down if we have to.”
Jake stared at the two of us as though we were insane, but the sound of footsteps coming from the other side of the door compelled him to join us. “This is stupid... insane! If we go where it wants it's just going to kill us!”
I pushed into the first ward and jogged down the hall, just behind the edge of the light that came from Jake's phone, and kept an eye out for the cafeteria entrance. Unless I was mistaken, this hall would go on for several hundred feet before terminating in a set of double doors. After that, the way to the front would be as simple as running across the cafeteria and through a stunted hallway just beyond.
The hall came to an end and—as I'd expected—the massive cafeteria came into view on the other side of the doors that turned up there. “I think we're onto something,” I said, wasting no time in crossing the cafeteria. We bypassed the rows of folded tables, the dark and lonely counters where the lunch ladies had once doled out food, and were aided by a watery band of moonlight that seeped in through the high-set windows. My legs and lungs were burning. This was more exercise than I'd done in ages. Fear filled in the gaps where my spotty athleticism would have usually held me back.
We were more than half-way across the cafeteria when I spotted the door that would lead us to the front. Except for the sounds of our hurried flight, there was only silence, which made me wonder if we hadn't managed to escape our pursuer. “Come on!” I shouted. Exiting the cafeteria, I found myself in the small hallway leading up to the front entrance, and at its terminus I could make out something glorious.
Moonlight.
Jake and Elizabeth caught up, joining me as I burst out into the front lobby.
I could have wept at the sight of those glass doors. After having wandered in solid darkness for so long—having been turned around and driven to the brink of insanity by the building's sinister will—we were now standing before an exit. The doors, I recalled, had been shut from the outside with chains, but that wouldn't deter us. I marched over to the alcove packed with old wheelchairs, and with Jake's help, carried one over towards the doors. We sized up the largest pane, the one that would be the easiest for us to crawl through, and launched the chair.
It struck
the glass and set the doors vibrating, bouncing to the floor. The glass was apparently thicker than it looked, and except for a scuff mark, there'd been no damage to it. We needed a more direct attack, to use something blunt on a single point.
“Try and pull a piece off of the wheelchair,” suggested Elizabeth. She tugged the leather backing off of one, revealing the long bits of rectangular steel that served to reinforce the backrest. “Use it like a battering ram.” She took a step back, holding the phone in her hand, and peered back into the hallway from which we'd come. “H-Hurry up!” she shrieked. “It's coming.”
I spared only a quick glance over my shoulder before joining Jake in attacking the glass. Sure enough—slowly, unsteadily, and with a strange turn of its head that brought its malformed countenance into view—the monstrosity was coming down the hall towards the lobby. Its ragged mouth sagged open and its vacuous eyes burned with shadow. The skin of its face was spread very thin—a papery layer of normalcy dabbed across something nightmarish. This imposter wasn't fooling anyone; its every movement was hideously unnatural.
The moment of truth had come. We were either going to break through this door or we were going to perish at the hands of this monster. Jake and I held the chair between us and heaved it into the glass—with the steel backing of the chair as a two-pronged ram—for everything we were worth. The metal pieces connected and sent a hairline fracture spreading through the pane. We repeated the process two more times before the glass fully spiderwebbed and we were able to kick the pane to pieces.
From the new opening the smell of fresh air entered the lobby. The smell of freedom.
Elizabeth, pale and shaking, was almost on top of us. She'd kept backing away from the approaching figure till there was no more room for her to retreat. Her back bumped against the door and she dropped the cell phone.
Not that we needed it anymore.
There was more than enough moonlight in the space for us to make out the terrible thing that stood in the room mere feet from us.
Asylum: The Afterlife investigations #1 Page 19
