Highland Cove

by Dylan J. Morgan

  Julian coughed, spraying gore onto Codie’s cheek.

  He ignored it, continued to press the laceration together; persisted in encouraging his friend to stay with them.

  With a final rasping breath that splattered blood over his chin, Julian whispered one word.

  “Leave.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Codie stared into palms laden with his friend’s warm blood. It flowed freely from his skin, slick and molten with its freshness. A droplet splattered onto his shoe, but he didn’t move, dumbstruck with what he’d just witnessed.

  His eyes.

  The image of Julian’s gaze remained frozen in his mind, the way his pupils slowly dilated with each laboured breath. Vitality drained from the man’s soft brown eyes as the blood drained from the savage wound in his neck. That final look would haunt Codie; it’d be the image he would wake to for uncountable mornings to come. And the guilt would be an unwanted emotion, sticking to him like an incurable disease. He should have done more to save Julian’s life: kneeling in the rubble pinching the man’s neck had not been enough. What would he tell Charlotte—how could he look her in the eyes without breaking down?

  The light shook above his hands, flickering over the blood, sparkling across its moist surface. Pulling his gaze away, he glanced towards Kristen; the torch in one hand, her other hand clasped to her mouth to cover a gape of pure horror. Her eyes flickered away from Julian’s body, levelled with his, and caught in the flashlight’s glow a tear travelled down her cheek.

  Numbness broke and he took a step back, his heel knocking against rubble. He reached out; found the armrest of the nearest pew, his bloodied palm sliding over the old timber. Slumping backwards, he crumbled into the bench before his legs gave out and sent him sprawling to the floor. The mess on his hands rippled a wave of revulsion through his gut and sickness flooded up his gullet. Codie leaned forward and vomited into the dust. Eyes closed, spittle dripping from his lip, he rubbed his hands onto his thighs, dispersing the blood to his jeans.

  He retched again, but nothing came up this time. A hand slipped over the top of his head, fingers curling into the threads of his hair. Kristen pulled his face to her hip and he cried.

  “What are we going to do?” she said.

  What could they do? Codie wanted to collapse into the rubble at his feet and curl into a ball, find some way to disperse the image of Julian’s death face swirling in the darkness of his closed eyes. He wanted to reverse time and call off this stupid expedition to the abandoned asylum, keep everyone safe and well back in London. An image of Liam’s face found a way through his remorse and grief, dragging with it the realization that they’d found Julian here alone; so where was Liam? And Alex? Now they would have to find two friends, and with the injuries inflicted to Julian maybe Alex had suffered a similar fate. Alex wasn’t in the chapel, so perhaps that was his blood out in the corridor. Someone might have attacked them here, Julian had succumbed and Alex had escaped, injured. Maybe he had Liam with him and they were both fleeing somewhere in one of the many hallways of this huge building. What they were going to do was find Alex and Liam and get the hell off this island.

  Sitting straighter in the pew, Codie refused to look at Julian’s lifeless form. He stood, and breathed deep to focus his mind. Pulling out the small bottle of water from his jacket pocket he took a quick sip and offered it to Kristen. She shook her head so he pushed it back into his pocket. Wiping his hands onto the backs of his jeans this time, he grabbed her hand.

  “We’re going to head back to the lobby,” he said, “and see if Alex or Liam is there. If Alex was here when Julian got hurt he would have gone back there, I’m sure of it.”

  Kristen nodded. “Okay.”

  She wanted to leave the island immediately, he sensed it, and understood it. The urge to flee and get out of here burned strongly in him too, but he wouldn’t leave without Liam and Alex. They’d been friends for a long time, he wasn’t about to abandon them.

  “Let’s go,” Codie said.

  Leaving the chapel and palming off the corridor, his hand left a dirty smudge on the wall. Codie hurried up the passage away from the chapel, dragging Kristen with him. He hated leaving Julian behind, alone in the chapel’s darkness, but his friend would have to wait there until he came back later to take him home to the mainland. The thought process was weird, as though Julian sat calmly on one of the pews waiting patiently, when in reality he was dead with his neck torn open. Dead—the realization terrified Codie. He’d never had anyone close to him die before, but for it to be one of his closest friends churned a cauldron of nausea tighter in his stomach.

  He let the torch light lead him down the hallway and it couldn’t guide him from the chapel quick enough. Night’s darkness swarmed around the light, a deep abyss intent on extinguishing the entire world’s brightness. Dawn couldn’t be more than an hour or two away, yet he doubted they would see sunlight for a while, not with the intense storm battering the island. At the head of the corridor he directed the light towards the smudge on the wall, someone’s bloodstain clear against the grime-coated stonework. It might be Alex’s blood, might even be Liam’s, and the thought urged him to quicken his stride. Kristen didn’t protest behind him. Surely they’d made their way back to the lobby; it was the most logical place to go. They wouldn’t go anywhere else in the building. In doing so, they might lose their way in the maze of corridors scattered throughout this old asylum.

  Lightning ruptured the heavens overhead, its light pulsing through the structure, flooding into hallways between cracks in the walls and damaged windows. Strobes of luminescence pulsated down the ward’s main stairwell, highlighting shards of splintered masonry, the emaciated remains of a small rodent, and a dark patch of spilled blood on the steps.

  He halted at the open doorway to the staircase, Kristen rushing past him in her haste to return to the lobby. His gaze fixed onto the stain as the electricity burned out overhead and night swooped down the shaft to reclaim its domain. Turning the torch light into the stairwell he draped its luminance over the mark on the steps, its freshness glinting in the light.

  “Codie,” Kristen implored. “What is it?”

  “The blood,” he said. “It leads this way.”

  “What?”

  “Look.”

  He stepped through the open entrance to the staircase, pointing the light at the blood. She came with him, didn’t say anything as she stepped onto the stairs and shone her own flashlight at the stain. One of them—either Liam or Alex—had come through here not so long ago. Why they’d gone up the stairs instead of towards the foyer he couldn’t fathom, but it told him they were in more trouble than he realized. Perhaps they were chasing someone; maybe they were fleeing for their lives. He shone the light around the steps to the small landing, searching for Liam’s other shoe, or maybe something else discarded by one of his friends.

  Leaning to his side, Codie directed the beam upward, between the staircases as they doubled back on themselves, climbing from the ground floor to the first. The stairs ascended further, reaching into the asylum’s heights. Night took over near the top; a heavy blackness obscuring the building’s ceiling a few floors above.

  Kristen leaned into him, craning her neck to look up. “What’s up there?”

  “Ends up at the operating theatre, I think. Maybe Alex went this way.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  Codie turned to her, tried to reassure her with a comforting squeeze of her hand. “Sweetheart, there was blood leading out of the chapel. I think Alex got hurt and he’s bleeding. Maybe he’s chasing whoever killed Julian and has followed him up these stairs. We can’t leave him.”

  She looked at him, and even in the subtle glow of the light he recognized the intense fear coursing through her. They’d both seen Julian die before them, but if she were to be believed, Kristen had seen more in this place than he imagined possible. He suspected her mind had played tricks on her, but to think you’d seen a dead
woman in a bath meant she was losing her composure. If they scaled the steps following the blood trail they might find more upsetting images: Alex could be injured, perhaps Liam was hurt too, and they might stumble into an encounter with whoever had attacked Julian. It might be too much to put Kristen through; he’d never wanted to put her in harm’s way. Maybe the safest place for her would be back in the foyer, in an open space instead of these constricted, dark corridors.

  “I need to go up there and investigate,” Codie said. Kristen didn’t reply. “Perhaps you should wait in the lobby.”

  She took a step backwards. “You said you’d never leave me. You promised!”

  He pulled her to him, wanted to hold her forever; needed to shield her from all the horror spiralling before them. Sliding fingers into her hair, he placed his lips to her cheek and kissed away a tear. He breathed her scent, the aroma of her still there beneath the odour of sweat and fear.

  “And I’ll never leave you,” he whispered near her ear. “I’ll always be with you, but I need to find Liam and Alex, before something terrible happens to them, too.”

  A whimper shook her body. She’d been through so much, her emotions bordering on hysteria. Moving back to look into her eyes, he felt his gut wrench at the acute terror twisted over her expression.

  “You know I need to look for them,” he said.

  She forced a nod. “I’ll come with you.”

  He realized it then: he could never survive without this woman. The thought of carrying on without her didn’t bear contemplation. When they got off this damned island he’d get down on one knee and commit his existence to her.

  Codie forced a smile, and gave a nod. “Okay, baby, we’ll go together.”

  They’d be safer together. She’d be safe with him. If she disappeared into the asylum’s darkness for a second time, he feared he’d never see her again.

  He squeezed her hand, shook life into his waning torch, and started up the stairs.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The higher they climbed, the colder the air became. Whether it was the storm’s breath gusting down the stairwell or something more otherworldly, Kristen couldn’t be sure. She felt no breeze on her skin, yet a chill seeped into her pores, standing her hairs on end.

  Since the shaft contained no windows, they made their way by the torch’s illumination. The world beyond the building was a dense storm, but with no view to the outside, the staircase around them became more foreboding than she’d expected. She wanted to get out of this space, hated this building, but with Codie’s hand gripping hers, she’d go anywhere as long as they stayed together. The thought of separating from him and waiting in the lobby terrified her. If left alone, the young girl from the bathroom might venture out and hunker in the darkness, watching. The teenager might touch her and feed from the sorrow of Kristen’s memories of finding her sister swinging with a broken neck. Perhaps the old lady had managed to escape from the tub. Kristen imagined the woman dragging her body along the hallway towards the foyer; her decomposed legs useless, aged and rotten hands pulling her through the rubble. In the darkened hall behind her, the ward’s other lost patients might stagger from their rooms, anxious for a piece of the living once more. Thunder rumbled outside, its bellow drifting through the building’s fractured skin, the storm’s energy fuelling the thousands of dead souls trapped in the asylum. Breath wheezed into her lungs in terrified gasps and Kristen tried in vain to banish the horrific images from her mind.

  She doubted that sleep would come easy for the next few months. If it did find her, she guessed her dreams would be filled with ghosts dragging their hellish forms from every dark corner of her mind.

  She wanted to ask Codie to slow down, take a break so she could catch her breath. She’d watched Julian die, and could do nothing but kneel in the dirt and hold his hand. What good had that done? It hadn’t helped, hadn’t prevented their friend’s death. A heavy sickness settled in her gut. She’d been close with his girlfriend, Charlotte, in school, they’d gone shopping together, had sleepovers at each other’s houses. How could something like this happen? Why had it unfolded in front of her, leaving her powerless to prevent it? None of them should have come here, and all she wanted to do now was get off this haunted rock and go home.

  But the island refused to let them leave.

  They clambered up another flight towards the third floor’s operating room, climbing deeper into the night instead of escaping towards the lights dotting the mainland.

  Hauling her exhausted body onto the second-floor landing, Kristen halted, hearing a child’s voice echoing in the darkness.

  With a gasp she stopped and glanced in the sound’s direction. She trained her torch down the corridor, but the beam barely reached the furthest bend. It illuminated strewn dirt and rubble, a discarded teddy bear covered by decades of fallen dust; it captured the flowing nightgown of a small child, long dark hair bouncing on her shoulders as she disappeared around the corner.

  Lightning ruptured the sky beyond the windows, and the silhouettes of children lingered in the hall where no shadow should remain.

  Her grip on Codie’s hand halted him as he made for the final staircase. Stopping, panting with urgency, he came to her. He looped his arm over her shoulder but she kept her gaze locked on the torch light, expecting the skeletal face of a long-dead child to peek around the wall.

  “Kristen, what is it?”

  “Down there,” she said, staring at the silent passageway.

  “What? Is it Liam? Did you see him?”

  “No, I saw a young girl.”

  “A young girl?”

  “A child—I heard her giggle as we came up the stairs; saw her run around the corner as if playing hide and seek. Maybe she wants us to follow her.”

  “Sweetheart, there’s no children here.”

  She locked her gaze on the beam of light, waiting for the child. “There are children everywhere on this floor. Don’t you sense them?”

  “Kristen, sweetheart.”

  Codie’s cold fingers touched her cheek, pressing into her flesh, pulling her stare from the corner until she looked into his eyes. They were beautiful, the clearest blue eyes she’d ever seen, and usually made her smile. But now the world around her was no longer perfect; the dead walked these halls, and they revealed an eternal existence of misery and heartache. Her life would never be the same, not now that she knew what lay beyond this world. She’d never thought much about death before, was too young and excited to contemplate her mortality. But in that moment, gazing into the eyes of the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, she wondered how she could cope with an afterlife without him.

  “Sweetheart,” he repeated. “I don’t sense anything, except for my love for you. There are no children here, it’s just us. Me, you, Liam; Julian.” Codie closed his eyes and turned away, and for a moment she thought a tear slid down his cheek. When he looked at her again, his stare had hardened. “Baby, we have to find Liam and Alex. We need to keep searching.”

  He was right. They couldn’t stand there anchored by the sound of a long dead child; they needed to search the asylum for their friends and then get out of here. The sooner they investigated the operating room the sooner they could return to the lobby. She wouldn’t even bother to pack her gear, and would brave the waters of the strait in the row boat if that’s what Codie had in mind. The old man wouldn’t be there for another day, and Kristen didn’t want to stay on the island a minute longer than necessary. The existence of the dead meant nothing compared to the lives of their friends.

  “I know,” she said. “Let’s go, hopefully we’ll find them on the next floor.”

  She prayed they would find them on the next floor so they could leave this cursed island quicker. It would be better for them to be in a larger group, more so now that the storm was dragging the dead from the shadows. With a nod, Codie turned and led Kristen up the final flight of stairs into the darkness.

  ~~

  The double doors
opened from a small waiting area into a large hallway. Codie remembered the layout from their prior walkthrough. It seemed such a long time ago now, although it was only a few hours. So much had changed since then: Liam had led them down the passage, asking questions to the dark; Alex hung back at the rear, filming them all with a handheld camcorder—now they were both missing. Julian had entered the surgery rooms first, displaying a boldness Codie had never seen before, and now the man was dead.

  The memories of the previous evening were too fresh; they hurt too much.

  Kristen hadn’t let go of his hand yet and he preferred it that way. He wanted her close and in contact all the time. He didn’t want to be parted from her for another second. She panted with exertion, although some of that could have been fear. Strangely, she’d seen a lot in this place: a shadow in the ground-floor bedrooms, an old lady in one of the bathtubs; the figure of a young child in the hallway below. Yet he’d seen nothing, not even experienced a thread of paranormal activity, save for a door slam which could easily be explained by the storm raging outside. If ghosts were in this building, why show themselves only to her? He feared for her mental health; she’d probably need medicating after getting back to the mainland.

  Pushing the worry out of his mind, he focused his attention back to the building layout. There were three operating rooms on this floor, one on each side of the passage; but they were small, containing a single operating table and a few broken cupboards. He rushed past them, shining his light in each, the flashlight illuminating debris and a discarded white coat in one—nothing that he hadn’t already seen on the earlier excursion. Liam had placed the static cameras at the far end of the passageway, in the main operating theatre. That room was bigger, with two tables, overhead lamps; one wall decked with cupboards and shelving. Liam hoped it might be a hotbed of activity, and Codie remembered his friend’s disappointment when their questions had gone unanswered. Not even a spike of energy or a feeling of sickness Liam sometimes experienced when spirits were near. Why Codie suspected he’d returned here, he couldn’t fathom, but a strange gut feeling told him they’d find out. As he neared the end of the passage, Codie felt sure of that fact.