by Brian Harmon
THESE GUYS ARE A LITTLE BIT LIKE THE PEOPLE I WAS TRAPPED IN ALTRUSK’S HOUSE WITH, ONLY A LOT WORSE. THEY SEEM TO HAVE BEEN TOUCHED BY SOMETHING VERY, VERY DARK
Eric wasn’t sure he understood what this meant, but it was disturbing, nonetheless.
As they rounded the back corner of the gymnasium, Eric lifted the glass and peered through it again. The old schoolhouse was much smaller than the sprawling high school, but it was still pretty massive. Looking through the glass, it was impossible to fathom that anyone could possibly miss it, but without the aid of the glass, it simply wasn’t there. And neither was all the space that it occupied. It was bizarre. Even going back and forth between the two views, Eric couldn’t quite wrap his head around it.
“What’s it doing here?” Aiden asked. “Why the high school?”
“It was burned at some point,” observed Eric. Almost the entire structure was charred. Half of the roof was missing. The only part that still looked untouched was the tower.
“It must have been the original high school, built back in the mid to late nineteenth century,” guessed Pink Shirt. “A fire at that time would’ve been extremely destructive. It would’ve required a new school to be built. As long as there was room for it, it’d make sense to build it in the same area.”
Eric supposed that was true.
“At some point, the old one was forgotten. People around here might think it was destroyed in the fire. More likely, I think, no one even knows that it ever existed.”
“New add-ons and renovations over the years would’ve caused the new buildings to crowd around the old one,” Eric agreed. In fact, this wing of the high school had been built right up against two sides of it, effectively fusing the new and old buildings. Knowing what he now knew, if he looked into the building’s plans, he’d probably notice some irregularities in the building’s details in this corner that no one else had ever thought twice about.
“Not so different from the asylum,” added Pink Shirt. “That building was used as offices and storage for a while after the institution was closed down, then emptied out and left unused for years. It was probably finally forgotten when the new hospital wings were added and the grounds remodeled in the eighties.”
Eric was impressed by this guy’s knowledge of Creek Bend. He’d obviously done his research.
The front doors of the old schoolhouse hung open and useless like the gaping jaws of a corpse. Although it was impossible to even see without the blue glass, there was nothing to keep out anyone who could actually find it.
It really is a key of sorts, Eric thought.
“How does it work?” asked Aiden as he took another turn peering through the glass.
“I couldn’t even begin to speculate,” replied Eric. It looked like nothing more than a piece of blue-tinted glass. It could have come from anywhere in the world. Yet it had the inexplicable ability to reveal even these deepest unseen things.
“There are countless things in the world we can’t explain,” said Pink Shirt. “It could be almost anything from true magic to extraterrestrial science.”
Eric wasn’t sure he believed in either of those things, but he did agree that the world was a vast and unpredictable place. “Whatever it is, it’s not normal.”
He led them through the doors and into a wide, gloomy hallway.
For a moment, both of his companions were disoriented by the sudden change from outside to inside, but it passed quickly as they stood together in the shadows, looking around them at the flame-gutted interior of the old schoolhouse.
“So is this officially the weirdest place either of you have ever been?” asked Aiden. “Because I think it definitely tops my list.”
Eric recalled the Altrusk house where he first met Isabelle, where the doorways didn’t lead where they should have and the building itself grew angry when things didn’t go as they were supposed to. He also remembered the cathedral with its long, winding stairs that seemed to carry him down into his own personal insanity as he struggled against the physical and emotional weight of two worlds and two timelines all struggling to occupy the same reality.
Thus far, this was nothing more than an old burned-out school that just happened to be invisible to everyone else in the world. It was remarkable, but it wasn’t the strangest place he’d ever been.
So far.
Not caring to discuss those things, he merely nodded and remained quiet.
Pink Shirt also seemed more or less unimpressed. “I’ve seen things with my own eyes I can’t believe. After a while of doing the job I do, you grow a little numb to any kind of fantasy. I can’t read a book or watch a movie. It always pales in comparison to the reality I already know.”
“What kinds of things have you seen?” Aiden asked, intrigued.
“Too many things to recount.”
“Then pick just one.”
“Fine. I encountered a demonic possession once.”
“Really?”
“I thought most of those had been explained by conditions like Tourette’s and dissociative identity disorder,” said Eric.
“Most are just that,” agreed Pink Shirt. “But the one I saw was real.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because she barfed up a live squirrel that infected my partner at the time with rabies and then crawled across the ceiling, slit open her belly and pulled out her own lungs.”
“Jesus,” sighed Eric. “That’s awful.”
“The awful part was that she still refused to die.”
But Aiden was easily as fascinated as he was shocked. “What did you do with her?”
“Fed her into a crematory.”
Eric felt sick at the thought of feeding a living person, possessed by a demon or not, into a crematory. The very idea was terrible. Even worse was the casual way he said it, as if it were as natural as taking the garbage to the curb.
This wasn’t the first he’d heard of such disturbing things, either. When he met the man who called himself Father Billy, he told him about a real-life witch of some sort who also refused to die.
He didn’t know who these people were, but they sounded more and more like the most terrifying group of people on the face of the planet. They were the people who made the world’s nightmares their business. And for reasons he couldn’t help but think were likely nightmarish in their own right.
“Really quiet,” observed Pink Shirt.
It was quiet. Unnaturally so, now that Eric was listening. The sounds of the traffic and the birds outside were strangely muted, in spite of the wide-open doors and the broken windows.
The old man told him that everything became twisted when you went deeper. Perhaps they, too, were twisted now, slightly wrenched away from the reality that existed outside these burned walls.
“No visible sign that anyone’s been here in a very long time,” added Pink Shirt as he knelt down and picked a small, twisted piece of brass up off the floor.
Leaves and litter from the busy campus had blown in through the open doorway and collected in the corners and along the walls. The subtleties of the scene were powerful. Eric saw no vandalism, no soda cans or bottles. Only the things that were light enough to be carried in on the wind. It was what wasn’t here that spoke the loudest, just as Aiden had described.
He looked down at his cell phone again. Without having to speak his question, Isabelle gave him the answer he was looking for: IT’S THE SAME AS ALL THE REST, BUT A LOT STRONGER. AND I DON’T FEEL THE DARK PRESENCE I FELT ON HOSLER
Pink Shirt glanced over at Eric at the sound of the incoming text message, but said nothing.
THERE’S SOMETHING ELSE THERE, INSTEAD. SOMETHING A LOT MORE…
Profound? Thought Eric.
YEAH. I THINK SO
Eric pocketed the phone, not wanting to talk about who was texting him, and looked ahead. They were standing in front of a wide, tiled stairway. A short flight led up to the fire-damaged second floor on the left. A longer flight led down to the much darker grou
nd floor on the right. More stairs waited above these, leading to a third floor. “Where do we go first?”
“Split up?” suggested Aiden. “Each take a floor? Cover more ground?”
Eric glanced at Pink Shirt. He still didn’t trust this man. He wasn’t convinced it was wise to let him wander unsupervised. What if he found what was hidden here? Would he then turn on them?
But the man in the pink shirt said, “Spreading out would definitely speed this up, but we probably shouldn’t get too separated. We still don’t know what we’ll find here.” Standing up, he held up the piece of brass he was studying. “These doors were blown open in the original fire. Hard enough to shatter the hardware. Here.” He tossed Eric the item. “A little souvenir.”
Eric examined the item. It was a little sliver of brass from the doors, twisted and partially melted. He hadn’t paid them much attention as he walked in. It was clear they’d been burned, but now he saw that they had indeed been torn open, as if in a blast. “It’s like a bomb went off here.”
“It’s been my experience,” said Pink Shirt, “that in situations like these, it’s rarely something as simple as a bomb.”
Aiden looked around at the debris surrounding the doorway. There were many such slivers of brass, now that he was looking. “If not a bomb, then what?”
“Hard to say. But nothing else in this area is as damaged as the door.”
He was right. Flames had ripped through this area, but only the door seemed to have been blown apart.
“I suggest we stick together and be careful.”
“We’ll start at the bottom and work our way up then,” decided Eric.
Pink Shirt nodded and began walking down the steps ahead of them.
Aiden followed close behind him.
Eric lingered for a moment at the landing, his eyes washing over the empty building around him. Something about this place felt strange. It was more than just an unseen structure. He had the distinct feeling that something about this place was very meaningful somehow…
But he couldn’t quite grasp what it was…
He turned and looked behind him. For just an instant there, he thought he glimpsed a shadow moving.
His imagination.
Nothing more.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The first floor hallway had been collecting leaves and litter for so many years that its floor was now completely lost beneath a thick layer of muddy soil. Gnarled, sickly weeds had sprung up, forcing them to wade through a miniature, indoor wilderness as they fanned out, peering into open classrooms and doorways.
The gymnasium was on the left, a great, shadowy cavern deprived of light but for a few small windows. Countless birds roosted in the rafters here, filling the space with the pungent stench of accumulated droppings. On the floor, small shapes scurried through the gloom. Rats. It seemed that the wildlife could see this place just fine. Was it only humans who were blind to it?
On the right-hand side of the hallway were classrooms, each one still furnished with the charred remains of desks and chairs. More birds and rats had taken up residence here, building their nests along the chalk rests and the ledges of the shattered windowsills as well as throughout the forest of ruined furniture frames.
Everywhere that nature had not painted over the manmade surfaces with its many colors and textures, the bricks were blackened and covered in a thick layer of grimy soot.
Even after all these years, Eric could still smell the smoke on the air. At times, it was almost overwhelming, filling his nose and clinging to his tongue so that he could almost taste it.
“This place is creepy,” observed Aiden. “And I’ve seen a lot of creepy places.”
Eric had to agree. In its glacially slow descent into total ruin, it had taken on an otherworldly feel. The only word he could think of to describe the atmosphere in here was “apocalyptic,” as if a shuffling corpse or oozing mutant might stagger into view at any moment and lurch after them.
“I’ve seen buildings left to waste like this before,” said Pink Shirt. “But this one is different.”
“How so?” asked Eric.
“It has a feel about it. Like nothing I’ve ever known.”
“The fire,” Eric guessed. “It adds a whole new dimension to it all.”
But Pink Shirt shook his head. “No. It’s more than that. The birds and rats… The way the weeds are growing in here… The worms…”
“Worms?” asked Aiden.
Pink Shirt raked though the crust of rotten leaves and dirt on the floor with the toe of his shoe, unearthing a carpet of writhing worms squirming through the black soil beneath.
Aiden cursed and took a step back, his eyes washing over the floor around him.
“There’s something here,” Pink shirt declared. “There’s a pattern. I can almost see it.”
Eric didn’t waste time trying to find a logical explanation. Even if there was one, he doubted either of them would listen. Nor should they. If he’d learned anything from these weird travels, it was that some things simply defied reason. He was better off assuming that anything was possible and staying on his toes.
“Did you guys see that?” asked Aiden.
Eric turned and followed his gaze down the hallway. “What?”
“I saw a shadow moving over there. I think someone’s here.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
The three of them continued on toward the doorway where Aiden saw the shadow, but after just a few steps, Eric caught sight of another shadow inside a different classroom as he passed the open door. Stopping to investigate, however, he found the space empty. There was no explanation for the shadow.
“Up there again,” said Aiden, pointing again down the hallway.
“Another one behind you,” said Pink Shirt calmly.
Eric looked one way and then the other. This had happened once before today, back at the asylum, right before he heard the scratching on the stairwell door. And right before the black creatures began appearing.
He still didn’t understand any of this stuff. What were those black creatures? Why were they only hostile on Hosler? Who was the old man who had taken his phone? Why were all of these places even here? And what the hell was he looking for?
It was all so confusing.
“Spread out a little,” suggested Pink Shirt. “Make it harder to surround us.”
Eric didn’t think it would make any difference, but he stepped away from them and approached the gymnasium’s far door.
A shadow passed as he approached, but it was gone by the time he stepped into the doorway. As he turned, he glimpsed another shadow moving behind him from the corner of his eye.
“I keep seeing them,” Aiden reported, clearly having the same experience in one of the nearby classrooms. “What are they?”
“Probably nothing,” replied Pink Shirt. “Formless shadows. I’ve seen them before, in other places. They’re usually harmless.”
“Usually?” asked Aiden.
“Usually. Sometimes not so much. And sometimes they act as heralds for things that can be very harmful.”
This seemed to startle Aiden. “Like what?”
But Pink Shirt didn’t elaborate. “These are different from anything I’ve witnessed, though. The ones I’ve seen were less fleeting.”
Karen’s phone began to ring, filling the quiet schoolhouse with the sharply contrasting, upbeat energy of the Spice Girls.
Pink Shirt turned and looked across the hallway at him, his eyebrow raised.
Eric looked back at him as he withdrew the phone from his pocket and shrugged. “It’s growing on me,” he confessed.
He looked down at the display and saw that it was from his phone again.
“Hello?”
“You came,” sighed the familiar voice.
Eric looked up and down the hallway. Was the mystery caller here now? Somewhere in the building? “I might’ve been here faster if I’d understood what the hell you were rambl
ing on about.”
“Who are you talking to?” asked Pink Shirt.
The old man chuckled. “I knew you’d get there. I always knew.”
“Glad I didn’t disappoint you. I guess.”
“It’s not over yet. Death is here with us. Inside the school.”
Eric frowned. That was a surprisingly scary sentence. What did he mean by that?
“You have to hurry.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“We won’t talk like this again.”
“Wait…”
But the caller was already gone again.
Eric lowered the phone from his face and looked around.
“Who was that?” demanded Pink Shirt.
“Don’t know. But he has my phone. The one I dropped at the Hosler place this morning. He keeps calling me. Sounds crazy, whoever he is.”
Pink Shirt’s eyes were suspicious as his gaze shifted to the phone in Eric’s hand. “There are different kinds of crazy,” he said.
“There is,” agreed Eric. This conversation was a good example.
“This person’s been helping you?”
“He gave me some clues,” Eric admitted. “They helped put it all together.”
“That’s how you figured out the sixteen-degree distortion.” It wasn’t a question.
“Right.”
He was still staring at Eric’s phone, pondering these things.
“Problem?” asked Eric.
Now Pink Shirt met his eyes again. “I was just thinking that this sounds like someone I’d like to talk to.”
“I’m not sure he has your number.”
“No. But you have his.”
“He doesn’t answer.”
“But your phone has a ring tone?”
Now Eric realized what he was getting at. He looked down at Karen’s phone, considering.
He supposed that could work. Unless the mysterious old man had turned off the ringer. Or if he was too far away in the building.
“Call it,” said Pink Shirt. “The less time we spend wandering aimlessly in these hallways, the better.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Opening Karen’s contact list, he highlighted his name and called the number.
