Experiment in Terror 04 Lying Season (22 page)

I slowly stuck my arm straight out in front of me. I wanted to see how close it was. I waved it around but hit nothing.

Raucous laughter erupted from the rooms. It caught on like a wave, crashing down the hall until it was all I could hear. Insane, unforgiving, unrelenting laughter, the type that you’d hear being howled at the moon. It reverberated through the hallway until it forced me to cover my ears.

I thought about calling Dex. He could come down and let me out. I could tell him I went to look for the bathroom on this floor. I took one hand away from my ear and took out my phone, conscious of not crushing the vulnerable, secret meds in my pocket.

BANG!

The lights above me suddenly came on with the sound of snapping wires and the low hum of a generator kicking in. The area just in front of me was illuminated, hurting my eyes. I could see again.

And there was nothing there.

The same went for the rest of the hallway. As each light went back on, it showed how empty the place was. And the laughter stopped along with it.

Until the end.

The last light went on.

There was a woman standing beneath the waxy light bulb. In the middle of the hall. Facing me. She was far enough away that I couldn’t make out her face. But I knew from the snakelike angle of her head that I didn’t want to.

She stood as still as night, not moving. Just facing me like a gunslinger during a standoff.

This…wasn’t good.

I slowly lifted up my hand that had the phone and dialed Dex while keeping my eyes on her.

She still hadn’t moved. But I knew it was misleading.

I put the phone to my ear and after a few rings (I could almost hear it ringing on the floor above) he answered.

“
Perry? You OK?”

“
I’m locked on the second floor,” I whispered. “Please come and let me out right now.”

“
OK, one sec,” he said. I heard him hang up, a few footsteps from above and then the sound of the third-level door opening onto the stairwell. I breathed a sigh of relief, not taking my eyes off the figure at the end.

Which was good. Because she twitched. And now, she was moving, walking toward me, twice as fast as a normal person, almost gliding down the hall as if she were on skates.

Her arms were outstretched, her head wobbled back and forth with each quick stride, and a thick flow of blood flowed off of her, falling to the floor behind her like a red bridal train.

It happened so fast.

She was there.

And then she was in my face.

Her grey, decaying hands around my neck. Her hands felt ice cold. She smelled like gin. She buzzed like bees. And her mouth opened wide, wider than any mouth should ever open, like a steel trap on loose hinges, with brown, rotting teeth as a horrific frame. A single wasp crawled to the edge of her bloated, black tongue. The whole hallway vibrated with an incredibly loud drone that was deafening and debilitating. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t live.

“
Perry!”

The door swung open and before Dex could enter, the girl was suddenly gone. Vanished into thin air and taking her dead hands, split face and infernal noise with her.

Dex looked around the empty hallway wildly and then focused on me. “What just happened to you?”

I shook my head, placing my fingers at my throat where the icy feeling wasn’t going away. I pointed at the floor above. “Need to get out of here,” I croaked.

He nodded, got me through the door and up the steps. Halfway up, I stopped on the landing and motioned for him to stay. I leaned over on my knees and tried to get my breath and my bearings.

Dex had the small camera on him and brought it up to my level, aiming it on me. “What happened?”

He was filming but I didn’t care. I was having a hard time gathering my thoughts, almost like someone else was sucking them out of my head.

I raised my finger in the air for him to give me a second and slowly breathed in through my nose. I felt at my neck again and gestured for him to touch it.

He did. His hand was hot.

“
It’s freezing. You’re ice cold, Perry,” he said. He removed his hand and put it up to my forehead. “You’re hot here though. What happened? Did you see something? Did something…hurt you?”

He stammered through those last words in a way I would have normally found touching except I didn’t know how I felt.

I nodded. “I went…I went to use the bathroom here. I got halfway down the hall and all the lights started going out…one by one. Then there was this laughter. I think it was the patients. From behind their doors. They were all laughing. And then they stopped. The lights slowly came back on. And when they hit the very end…I saw her.”

“
Saw…her? The girl you saw in the apartment?”

“
Yes. It was her. I saw her earlier today too.”

He nodded, not looking very impressed. He nibbled on his lip for a few seconds and then said, “In the bathroom. At the restaurant. I wanted to ask you about that but…I didn’t want to pry.”

That was an odd thing for him to say. Dex liked to pry about everything and anything, especially when it had something to do with me. It was almost like a hobby to him, just as bugging him for information was a hobby to me. But I let it slide. For now.

“
Yeah. It was her. And her again now. She ran after me. And suddenly she was right here.” I waved my hand in front of my face. “I could smell her…the gin.”

Dex turned a wicked shade of pale. All expression left his face and the camera lowered an inch. I watched him carefully, not expecting that reaction.

“
What is it? Dex? Have you seen her too?”

He shook his head, blinking hard, seeming to come out of what mini-episode he just had. “No. It just…reminded me of something.”

“
What?”

“
Did she hurt you?” he peered at my cold neck inquisitively.

“
She wanted to kill me. I don’t know if she hurt me. But she would have if you had not shown up. Then she just…” I snapped my fingers.

I put my hands back to my throat and felt around again. My skin temperature was returning to normal but my heart was still racing, the beat popping out my jugular like a drum. “I’m OK.”

He nodded, not looking too convinced, and then turned off the camera. “We’ve got 20 minutes left. Care to do the rest of the third floor with me? I’ll understand if you say no.”

I didn’t actually want to do anything but go back in the car and return to their apartment with Jenn and Fat Rabbit, as funny as that sounded. But at the same time, I felt like as long as I was with Dex, I would be OK. For whatever reasons, this ghost was not showing herself to Dex. Only to me. As long as I was with him, I would be safe. At least, that’s what I was counting on.

“
That’s OK, let’s do it,” I said and stepped onto the first step.

Dex reached out and put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “Are you sure, kiddo? You’re my most precious equipment here.”

I gave him a brief smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. At least if she comes back now, maybe we can get her on film.”

“
Now we’re cooking with gas,” Dex said with a smile. He was pleased to keep going; lord knows how important the show was to him, but I could tell he was the tiniest bit torn up about leading me up there and inviting the same kind of torment.

I was torn, too, but I determined to go through with it. One of those instances where turning back wouldn’t really make much difference. This ghost was appearing in his apartment for crying out loud. It was wherever I went. That thought sunk my chest like a heavy rock through water.

We walked up to the third floor and entered the hallway, which was still barely lit by the lantern on the ground. Some of his equipment lay scattered about, including the EVP gadget, which was propped up against the wall, lights blinking, obviously recording.

Dex held up the camera and motioned down the hall. “Now we’ll just try each door and see what happens.”

I nodded and walked forward into the darkness, the lantern now swinging from my arm. The only sounds were our footsteps and my heart in my head. We stopped at the first door. It had no numbers on it. I paused before I tried the handle and looked at Dex and the camera.

“
Where is everyone, anyway?” I asked him in nothing more than a whisper.

“
What do you mean?” his voice automatically lowered to match mine.

“
When I was downstairs. I heard people in their rooms. But I never saw any nurses. Do they really leave people alone like that? Is that normal?”

He shrugged. “It could be. If they operate by different hours here and they control those hours, this might be their bedtime. I’m sure Roundtree is flitting about in her bat-like way, but that’s probably it. The place I was in had over 100 patients but I’m sure one head nurse could handle them all when they are supposed to be sleeping.”

“
But how can they sleep now?” It was so fucking early.

“
Kiddo, I don’t know. We can ask the doctor on Thursday. But for now, we’re running out of time, OK. Just…try the door.”

I sighed and turned to it. I placed my hand on the handle and it shocked me with a giant bolt of static electricity that left me speechless for a few seconds and unable to move. It was like I had been poking around a live light bulb.

“
Jesus Christ, that was some shock!” Dex exclaimed. “I could see that as clear as lightening. Are you OK?”

I nodded when I found my nerves again but was a bit iffy about touching the knob. I stepped back and said, “You try it.”

Dex grimaced in the low light but he stepped forward, hand extended. He placed it on the knob….

…
and shook back and forth violently, his teeth chattering loudly with his spasms.

“
Dex!” I yelled and came forward, unsure of whether I should touch him or not.

But he stopped abruptly and took his hand away from the door. “Just kidding.”

He smiled at me. Enraged, I punched him on the shoulder. Hard. “That wasn’t fucking funny, you asshole!”

“
It was kind of funny,” he said, still smiling, though it was disappearing slowly.

I crossed my arms and shook my head. “No, it wasn’t. And you’re opening all the doors from now on.”

He pouted but his lips reversed when he realized how angry I was. How dare he just make light of that, considering everything that had been happening to me. After everything I had just told him. What a fucking chump.

“
Sorry kiddo, I was just-”

“
Just open the fucking door,” I said.

He nodded quickly and tried. The knob actually turned and the door opened with a tiny push from his shoulder.

We stood in the doorway and I brought the lantern light forward. At first we could only see the swirling dust catching in the beam, but after it settled and our eyes learned to look past it, we could see a narrow room comprised of a single bed, a sink with a cloudy mirror above it, an armoire, a door to either a bathroom or a closet, and a side table. The window was covered by a heavy shade that blocked out most of the light from outside.

“
So this is what they look like on the inside,” I said while breathing out. “This is terrible. To live like this…”

Dex didn’t say anything. He pushed the door open wider, pushing in the lock on the knob as he did so, and stepped in. I wasn’t too eager to follow him. I stood where I was in the doorway.

“
Was it like this for you?” I asked. I couldn’t help but relate everything we were going through to him. It was hard not to. We were in a mental hospital, who better to know what was going on than someone who had lived in one. For two whole years. It still boggled my mind.