by David Jester
Malcolm inched the door open and poked his head through the gap. He was angry at what the inmates had done to the pregnant woman, angry at what they had done to so many others inside the hospital; he wanted to make them pay, but storming outside and running into one of them wouldn’t be a wise decision. He knew that the best hope he had was to make it out of the hospital alive, then he could call the police and let them deal with the mess. There was a chance that people were still alive inside the building, if he could make it out and call for help, then he could save their lives.
There was a phone inside the room, an ancient device stuck to the wall. He had tried to phone for help, praying that he could get through to someone, but the line was dead. He wasn’t surprised and doubted he had been the first one to try. The inmates had probably cut the phone early on, when the mayhem and the murdering started. He had checked his own phone again, a desperate and pointless act. He still hadn’t been able to get a signal.
He held his breath as he looked up and down the corridors. He half expected the laughing man with the loud footsteps to be waiting for him; waiting to do to him what he had probably done to so many others, but there was no one there. He released his breath slowly and stepped outside, careful to shut the door behind him.
As much as he needed to escape and find help, he knew that he couldn’t do it alone. He needed to find his friends, make sure they were okay. The three of them had been together all of their lives, they fought and they bickered, especially Eddie and Darren, but they were like brothers and they had been that way for as long as they could remember. That friendship, that kinship, that closeness, was what told Malcolm that something wasn’t right. He had a feeling that they were in trouble. He didn’t believe in telepathy or a sixth sense, but he had known Eddie and Darren a long time, long enough to know how they would be reacting right now; that knowledge and that experience was what told him that one of them was in trouble and needed his help.
Darren knew that his end was near. The man with the unchanging expression, timid voice, and gigantic frame, didn’t mess around. He had killed two people and he hadn’t broken a sweat doing it. The man had mentioned a doctor, but the way he spoke, in an almost robotic way, and the way the others acted around him, told Darren that he was the one to fear, he was the one in control. Whether the doctor was real, an aspect of his delusion, or simply him talking in third-person Darren didn’t know, nor did he care. The only thing that concerned him was that several vicious, blood-thirsty psychopaths had just fought over who would have the pleasure of killing him, and that pleasure had seemingly fallen to the biggest, strongest, and sickest of them all.
Darren dropped his head into his chest and waited for his life to end. He thought about everything that he was giving up. He thought about his mother, he thought about Ian, he thought about the fact that he didn’t have a job, hadn’t achieved anything at school, and didn’t even have a home to go back to. That made him feel better about losing it all, but then he thought about his future. He was still young; he still had so many opportunities ahead of him, so many different paths that his life could take. He could be anything he wanted to be, if only he wanted to be anything.
In his final moments, he hated himself for wasting his life. He hated himself for living a life of crime, a life of delinquency, drugs, and burglary. He had been throwing away his youth and this is where it had led him: being murdered in a dark room in a psychotic clinic by some psychopathic idiot.
He also thought about his friends. He thought about Malcolm and wondered if he had made it out alive, if he would be able to make it somewhere safe and call for help. It would be too late for Darren by then, but at least his corpse wouldn’t be left to rot in this building. He also thought about Eddie, the hyperactive, aggressive liability whose idea it was to go to the clinic. He cursed under his breath, “Fucking ginger idiot.”
Then he felt big, strong hands around his back. He cringed and twitched when those hands, hands that had just killed two people, touched him. He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter and waited.
He felt the ties being released from his hand, felt a soft and reassuring hand tap his shoulder. He sensed the big man by his side, and walking away. Darren opened his eyes and saw the behemoth’s broad back in the doorway, before he turned down the corridor and disappeared.
Confused, Darren looked himself up and down, making sure that he was alive and that he hadn’t been brutally murdered.
“What the fuck?”
The other bodies were still strewn around him, the room was covered in blood and the scent of death, but Darren was alive and unharmed. The big man, the psychopathic giant, had saved his life.
He heard giggling in the hallway, growing fainter and fainter as its source moved away. The giggling then broke back into a hysterical laughter, a succession of footsteps followed, echoing faintly through the corridors and then, moments later, the noises faded completely. The behemoth was out of sight and out of earshot. And for whatever reason, Darren was still alive.
26
Eddie wiped the knife on the seat of his pants, wiping a smear of blood on the tattered denim. He stared at the handle, at the bright-eyed reflection that beamed back at him through a crimson stain. He had done well. Not only was he still alive, but he had taken a couple of the psychopaths out. He doubted that Darren would have acted the same way, doubted that his dimwitted friend would even still be alive. Not only was Darren a weak link, Eddie mused to himself, but he was a liability.
He stood at the top of the staircase, looking up and down, his eyes skimming over the dead body at his feet. The thought occurred to him that he should find his friends, but it didn’t stay with him for long. Malcolm was tougher than Darren, but even he would struggle to stay alive in these conditions. He also thought about his phone, wondering if he could find a signal. He was nearer the top of the building now and might have better luck, but he quickly dismissed that thought as well. He had a job to do and he wasn’t leaving until he did it. He was also just beginning to enjoy himself.
Eddie looked at the corpse and the knife again. He gave himself an agreeable nod. He was the toughest, the hardest, the most resilient of the friends. They had mocked him in the past because of his upbringing, said he was a privileged softie, but now he had showed them. It was just a shame that they wouldn’t be alive to see the day when he became a hero. Although, he thought with a smile, there was still a good chance that Malcolm had used his initiative to escape and a good chance that Darren had avoided capture by hiding in a cupboard, pissing himself, crying for his mummy, and waiting for someone to rescue him.
Eddie took a step towards the flight of stairs and something out of the corner of his eye stopped him. He thought it a trick of periphery at first, but when he pulled his gaze to the staircase, he saw a figure dart out of the light and into the shadows.
“You!” he spat. “Stay there. Stop fucking running!”
He moved towards the stairs, back the way he came. He stumbled over the dead body, regained his balance, kicked the corpse angrily for getting in his way and then bolted down the stairs, taking them two at a time. He couldn’t see the figure down the next flight, but he knew where it had gone, he knew there was only one route it could take. He cleared the stairs with one leap, feeling his knees and his shins judder painfully on landing, before bolting through the door at the bottom and stumbling into the hallway.
He didn’t stop to concentrate on where he was or on what might be around him. The figure had darted around a corner again and he was intent on following it. He followed it down a dark corridor, lit by a buzzing light in the distance. He followed it under that light, through it and back into the black. He slowed his pace and kept the knife ready in his hand as he tracked through the darkness.
He heard laughing. A strange mocking laugh. He knew it was the thing he was chasing; he knew it was mocking his inability to catch it. He ground his teeth, cursed under his breath. The laughter increased, the thing wasn’t running away from
him, it was running toward him.
He stood still. A light flicked on in the distance, he heard it buzz, pop into life, and saw the splash of light. His darkness became brighter.
He heard fast and heavy footsteps pounding the floor, shaking the walls. The laughter was increasing, growing in volume. It annoyed him. He knew it was mocking him, knew it was trying to make him mad, but he didn’t know why it seemed to be coming straight for him.
Another light snapped on, this one just around the corner. The hallway was lit now and Eddie could see a shadow at the end, cutting through the orange light and nearly blocking it out.
The laughter increased again, the footsteps continued. Then the man, the thing, emerged. It wasn’t a shadow this time, it was fully illuminated and it was massive. Much bigger than Eddie had anticipated, much bigger than he was.
The Thing stopped when it saw Eddie. It had a curious face, a smiling yet thoughtful expression. Eddie hid the knife behind his back, wanting to retain the element of surprise. He doubted the flimsy knife would do anything to the big man but that wouldn’t stop him from trying.
Eddie was the first to move and, when he did so, he was surprised to see that The Thing took a cautious step backwards, back around the corner. Eddie held up his hand and put on his soft, manipulative voice, one better suited for a child or an animal, which this thing seemed to be a cross between.
“Stay there,” Eddie said softly. “I just want to know . . . Who are you?”
The Thing looked back down the corridor from which it came, then behind Eddie, into the darkness. Its eyes also moved to Eddie’s arm, it knew he was carrying a knife, knew what his intentions were, yet it made no move to stop him, made no effort to run or to talk. Eddie advanced closer and closer, when he was just a couple of feet away he asked, “What are you doing here?”
The Thing took another step back, but Eddie jumped at it, exposing the knife and launching himself in one quick and deadly movement. With his free hand, he grabbed The Thing by its bulky shoulder and then, with his other hand, he brought the knife over in one big swing, aiming high, for its throat.
Eddie was grinning, practically salivating at the thought of bringing The Thing down, but that grin shifted when it grabbed his wrist and squeezed. Eddie yelped. He dropped the knife and watched it bounce to the floor.
He thought he was finished, he knew he was powerless to stop The Thing from doing what he wanted to do to him, but he intended to fight him to the death regardless of how quick that death would be.
To his surprise, he simply moved him out of the way, pressing him up against the wall. Eddie looked into his eyes as he did so, studied his smiling expression which hadn’t changed throughout. Once he had pushed him there, The Thing turned back to the corridor and ran like a gleeful child, taking big strides and giggling to himself.
“What the fuck?” Eddie said.
Eddie moved to pick up the knife, then he saw the shape again. He paused and studied it. He realized he was no longer interested in chasing it, was no longer interested in what it was. It certainly wasn’t the thing he had encountered on the stairs or the thing he had just bumped into. Whatever it was, it was quick, fleeting, and very interested in him. Eddie was just as interested in it, and in where it was taking him. It wasn’t out to get him, it wasn’t trying to kill him or drive him insane, it was trying to show him the way, Eddie realized. It had taken him to one that had lurked on the staircase, taken him to The Thing that had just escaped his clutches. This thing, this shadow, whatever it was, knew that Eddie was there to save the day, to be the hero, and it wanted to help him accomplish that task by showing him the evil that lurked within the building.
He picked up the knife, gave the shadow a nod and a smile and then took off after it. It turned the corridor just as he reached it, but he didn’t slow his pace.
27
The body had been dead for hours. The eyes were glassy, staring at the wall opposite and the abyss beyond. Her eyes bulged out of her head; parts of her hair had been glued to her forehead with perspiration, some of it stuck to her neck, glued to the thick red welt that wrapped around her throat like a crimson necklace.
Malcolm crouched down for a better look. She looked like a patient. She was wearing a dressing gown with a black nightdress on underneath. The dress rode up her pale legs, exposing wisps of pubic hair. Her legs were open and splayed apart, but he didn’t think she had been sexually assaulted. She had been killed, pinned against the wall, and strangled, but there was no motivation other than murder.
It didn’t feel right to just leave her there, her half naked body on show, but he didn’t know what else to do. He wasn’t religious, he didn’t think that praying could help her now and he didn’t believe that any eternal part of her had moved on, but it still didn’t feel right to just leave her like that.
He covered her up, straightened out her dress to cover as much of her exposed flesh as he could and wrapped her dressing gown around her to cover the rest. He didn’t know if she had been as crazy as the other patients, there was a chance that she had even played a part in the grisly murders back in the television room, but in death, in the peaceful, empty oblivion of eternity, she looked innocent.
He found more death in the room opposite. It was a small kitchen, a cramped space with a series of cupboards running along the top, and a microwave, toaster, and coffee machine placed on a length of counter that ran underneath. The worktop and the cabinets were a sickly brown, an horrible color scheme that probably hadn’t been changed for at least three decades and had never been in fashion. The chipped brown paint and stained countertop had now been decorated with splashes of red, and great streaks of blood that injected color onto the bland surfaces.
The coffee machine had been ripped from the wall and the toaster lay on its side. A cutlery drawer had been yanked open, and its contents were spilled all over the floor. Some of the knives from the drawer had clearly been used to murder the man that lay slumped up against the counter. His body was in a similar position to the woman, but he hadn’t been strangled, he had been stabbed. The knives were still wedged in his chest, his stomach and in the side of his neck. There were other wounds around his body; the knives that had made them now lay in his lap or on the floor. He looked like a human pin cushion. Someone had taken the time—probably when he was dead or dying and in no fit state to retaliate—to stab him with a dozen different knives.
Malcolm imagined their gleeful face as they took knife after knife from the drawer to plunge into the dying man, grinning at the glistening silver weapons like a child on Halloween, indulging in as many sugary delights as they could get their hands on.
The dead man was sitting in a pool of his own blood and that blood had seeped outwards, inches away from Malcolm’s feet. It had coated the cutlery on the floor; only a few pieces had avoided the crimson wash. Malcolm thought about taking one, adding to the one that he already carried, a backup in case he lost it, in case it was taken from him, but he doubted he could bring himself to use either of them anyway. The image of the dead man sickened him, the puncture wounds where the knife had entered made a deep part of him cringe and shiver. He couldn’t imagine doing that to someone, couldn’t imagine creating those wounds or turning something living and breathing; into the pale, bloodied mess that he saw before him.
He left the bloodbath in the kitchen, tried not to look at the dead woman in the corridor and continued onward. The lights were on, but the hospital was still. He heard the occasional noise, sudden abrupt bangs and creaks, but he didn’t know if he was listening to distant footsteps, fighting or the groans of an old building. He tried not to think about it too much, tried not to let his imagination wander. He concentrated on the job at hand, on making it through the corridors, discovering what was going on and where his friends were hiding, whilst trying to stay out of sight of the psychopathic patients that roamed the halls. He had seen some of them dead already, but he knew that there were enough of them alive to give him problems; he
just hoped that some of the staff were also alive. He wanted answers, he wanted an explanation, and he wanted an escape route.
Darren walked steadily, taking care with each step and trying to listen out as he did so. His blood was racing through his body and he felt dizzy and unstable. He had been able to hear The Behemoth’s heavy, slapping footsteps, but as he left the room where he had nearly breathed his last breath, he couldn’t hear beyond the dizzying sound of his own blood rushing inside his ears.
He didn’t hear the approaching footsteps around the corner, didn’t notice that someone was right in front of him until he turned the corner and they ran into him.
The impact knocked out what little air was left inside his lungs, accelerated his already pounding pulse and worsened his aching head. His world turned black, hazy, and then red and he thought he was going to lose consciousness again. He hit the ground hard, his back buckled under the impact, his elbows crunched, and his skull just missed a violent connection with the floor. He skidded several feet backwards, until he was pressed up against the wall, staring into the well-lit ceiling as his attacker rushed him.
His attacker had managed to remain upright through the impact and was quick to rebound, jumping on Darren and pinning him to the floor within seconds. He dug a knee into his groin and struck a fist against his ribs, making sure he remained on the floor, letting him know who was boss.
