Project 17 (18 page)

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I scream. My stomach bounds up into my throat. "Holy shit," Chet yells out.

Before I can dodge it, I've fallen through the floor-- one hand barely holding on to Derik's grip, the other clenched on to a thin, rotted piece of floorboard. I feel my fingers slip through Derik's as the weight of my body tugs me downward--deeper through the hole. I struggle to gain a better grip of the floorboard, feeling a jagged piece stab right into my ribs. The more I move, the more the floor crumbles around me, making the hole bigger. I can hear the loose concrete pieces collapse to the floor below.

"Just hold on," Derik says, struggling to get a better grip of my hand. Lying on the ground, he instructs Chet and the others to anchor him in place--to hold his legs from behind so he doesn't fall through as well.

"Hurry!" I shout. My arms shake. The skin over my ribs singes. And the muscles in my fingers are growing weaker by the moment. I turn my head to look down, to see how far it would be to fall. At the same moment, my hand loses its grasp of the floorboard, and I'm just dangling from Derik's grip.

"Look up!" Derik shouts at me.

I crane my head to look back at him. His eyes are wide and urgent like he's just as scared as I am.

"Stay focused right here," he says, blinking. In a fairly stable position now, he grabs both my wrists. He pulls me forward, but the ground crumbles even more, and I scream. Derik slips waist-deep into the hole, but the

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others pull him back, and he regains positioning.

"Keep focused!" he shouts. "You're not gonna fall."

"Yes I am," I whimper, tears streaming from my eyes. My fingers slip a little farther from his grasp.

"What if I go downstairs," Tony offers. "I could try and catch her."

Derik is panting, trying to gain a better grip. And his hand is bleeding. There's a gash in his palm where he must have cut it.

"Two of you go," he says. Using his forearms, he lifts me upward instead of forward. His face is red and strained. The veins in his neck are protruded. He gets me up just high enough so that I can work my knee onto a solid piece of flooring, while the other knee collapses through the floor.

Still, I feel myself pulled forward, against Derik's chest. He rolls me over against his body, like tumbling from a fire, until we reach stable ground.

"Are you all right?" he says once we've stopped.

I nod, noticing how he's still gripping my hand, hoping that he never lets go.

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LIZA

DERIK HOLDS ME AGAINST
him for several moments, his face only inches from mine. "Are you sure you're okay?" he asks. His breath is warm against my cheek.

I nod for a second time, staring right into him--at the clenched set of his jaw and that penetrating stare. His pale blue eyes are wide and urgent, concerned for my safety. It's a look that makes me feel all off balance, and so I pull myself closer against him, able to feel his heart beating against mine.

"Say something," he whispers.

"Thank you," I whisper back.

"Anytime." The corners of his lips turn upward in a crooked smile.

"Here," Chet says, breaking the moment. He tosses a rag at Derik's head. Apparently Derik cut his hand on a jagged piece of tile.

"Thanks, man," Derik says to him. "I couldn't have done it without you."

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I turn away fast so I don't have to see the blood.

"Are you okay?" Derik asks me, wrapping up his hand.

I nod and tell him about my blood hang-up, that I'm prone to fainting upon even the first glimpse of a trickle.

"It's a good thing you're gonna be a doctor," he jokes.

But I'm not laughing. Because it's true. Because maybe becoming a doctor isn't the right thing for me.

"That was intense," Chet says, still huffing and puffing. He gives Derik's shoulder a high five, and then prattles on about how it was hard to keep Derik's legs down, how he almost lost his grip when the floor collapsed the second time, and how he didn't appreciate Derik's boot heel wedged into his cheek.

Meanwhile, I take a seat against the wall, suddenly noticing how my side is aching. I rub it with my palm and focus on the hole in the floor. It's huge--bigger than the size of a manhole.

"Do you want some water?" Mimi pulls a bottle from her bag and offers it to me.

I take it, still breathing hard, and scrunch myself even farther against the wall, fearing that somehow I might fall through the floor again at any moment. I brush the concrete dust off my coat and glance up at Derik.

He's staring right at me, making me almost lose my breath--again. The smile across his lips widens, like he knows what I'm thinking--what I'm feeling--like maybe he feels it too.

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"Hello?" calls a whining voice.

"Tony," Mimi says with an eye roll.

Derik moves cautiously across the tile to peek through the hole. Tony and Greta are standing right under it. Derik tells them to come back up and, once they do, after a few minutes spent catching their breath, Mimi complains that we're wasting time, that we need to keep going.

"We need to find Christine's doll," she insists.

"Are you okay to keep going?" Derik asks, turning to me.

I nod and take Derik's hand as he helps me up-- beyond excited when he doesn't let go.

We begin again down the hallway, toward the auditorium. This part of the building is even more dangerous. I mean, corroded floors aside, there are entire patches of ceiling in our path, where the floor above has caved in completely.

Derik aims his camera upward, through one of the open ceiling sections, trying to get his hand to work despite the cumbersome bandage. You can see all the way through--at least two stories up.

I let go of Derik's hand and step away so he can get the shot.

"There's something moving up there," he whispers, zooming in closer.

A second later, pieces fall toward him from above. I go to pull him out of the way, but a couple pelt against his head, and he drops the camera. "Holy shit!" he yells out.

The remainder of the pieces fall at our feet. "Are you okay?" I ask.

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Derik nods, rubbing at his head, though he appears to be just fine.

"Holy rocks," Chet says, standing at my side. He kicks the rocks that fell--a pile of palm-sized stones.

"Why the hell are rocks falling from the sky?" Greta asks.

"Not the sky," Tony corrects. "The ceiling."

"Do you think there's someone up there?" Greta asks.

I aim my flashlight beam upward through the hole. It appears that most of the floors above have completely corroded over, making it impossible to walk on them.

"Coincidence, maybe," Derik says.

"No coincidence," Mimi snaps, stooping down closer to look. "There are seventeen rocks."

"Seriously?" I ask.

She nods. "It's Christine ... I just know it. It's like she's watching us. She knows we're here."

"Does she know I'm wearing SpongeBob boxers?" Chet asks.

Derik shakes his head and lets out a sigh, refusing to buy into Mimi's ideas.

Even though I know she's right.

"I found the auditorium," Tony says, clutching the map. He gestures to a door just a few yards away.

Derik takes my hand again. "Are you ready?" he asks. I nod. "Let's go."

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CHET

INSTEAD OF GETTING
a move on, Derik insists that he needs to check out his camera, and so we find ourselves a secure spot right outside the auditorium.

"Is everything okay?" Liza asks him.

"Seems to be," he says, going through all the controls. "I'm lucky."

"Lucky that we haven't bailed yet," Greta adds. "While you're checking your camera, let's check out some footage. I want to see how I look in this pathetic lighting." She readjusts her headlight.

"Are you kidding?" I joke. "We're in the dark. You couldn't look better."

I even catch Tony smiling.

I thought I'd feel weird after telling everybody about my dad's lust for liquor--I don't even know why I did; it just sort of happened--but luckily everything seems pretty cool, especially since no one's treating me any

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differently. Not two minutes after I told them, Greta pushed me out of the way--literally--so Derik could get a side angle shot of her applying a fresh coat of lip gloss.

So. Not. Hot.

"Check this out," Derik says. He scoots forward on the floor, giving in to Greta's not-so-subtle request to view some footage. He sets the camera down in front of him but angled upward so we can see the screen.

We squat down to look. It's footage from the tunnel-- the scene he shot with Greta, Liza, and Tony, while Mimi and I were upstairs.

"What's with all the circle things?" Greta asks, squinting hard to look.

There's a bunch of white globes floating midair, one strategically placed over Greta's butt as she moves down the length of the tunnel.

"They're ghosts," Mimi says. "I saw it on one of those ghost hunter shows. Digital equipment can pick up all sorts of stuff--stuff that isn't visible or audible to the human eye or ear. They call it white noise."

"Seriously?" I ask, noticing how the circles vary in size--much like hooters.

Mimi leans forward to turn up the volume on the camera. "Just listen," she says.

We're forced to sit through an entire cheesy scene starring Derik and Liza as the happy couple gazes longingly into each other's eyes, a candle positioned between

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them, and tons of asbestos hanging off the corroded tunnel walls behind them.

Now, if that doesn't spell romance I don't know what does.

"Horny little devils," I say, referring to the ghosts. There are a couple of white circles smack-dab over Liza's chest.

Liza folds her arms in response, noticing the globes as well.

"Do you hear that?" Mimi asks.

"I hear Derik trying to hit on Liza," I say, though still taking note of some of his one-liners.

"No," Mimi squawks.
"Under
their voices. Do you hear that whistling sound?"

"I don't hear anything." Derik goes to turn the volume down, embarrassed by his game, but Mimi intercepts him and turns the volume up full blast.

And that's when I hear something--a soft whistling sound, like running your finger over the rim of a glass.

"What the hell is that?" Derik asks.

When the scene ends, the whistling fades into a crackling sound, and you can hear Derik and the others freaking out in the tunnel--just after the door shuts and locks and they can't find their way out.

I lean in closer, feeling a prickling sensation at the back of my neck, noticing how the crackling almost sounds like a voice. But still, it's hard to tell. It's sort of like trying to watch the nudie channel when your folks

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don't splurge for cable, when all you can hear are a couple of faint ohhh's and ahhh's amid all that pain-in-the-ass static.

"Do you hear that?" Mimi asks. "Someone's talking."

"If you seriously hear talking," Derik says, "then maybe you need to check yourself in."

"Listen!" she barks.

"I
hear it," I say, to make her feel better. "You do?" she perks.

I shake my head, since I honestly don't. I mean, aside from a couple of hisses and sputters, I can't make anything out. I lean forward, practically pressing my ear up against the speaker.

Finally I hear something more. It sounds like someone's whispering. "I hear it too," I say.

"Can you tell what they're saying?" Mimi asks.

I shake my head, straining harder to hear, but it's just static again, followed by more crackling.

"Try advancing it," Mimi insists.

Derik does, then pushes play , but it's just silent now.

"Try again," she says.

We spend the next fifteen minutes or so searching backward and forward through footage, listening for more white noise.

Until we find some.

There's a whispering sound in the scene where we first broke in. I close my eyes so I'm not distracted by the action and try my best to concentrate--to focus on the rhythm of the words.

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"It's hard to tell," Mimi says, "but it almost sounds like someone's angry. You can tell by the cut of the words."

"What words?" Derik asks. "You can't even tell what she's saying."

"But that's just it," Mimi continues. "You can definitely tell it's a
she."

I nod, noting that the whispering sound does have a high-pitched quality. "What if it's just radio frequency?"

"I think it's Christine," Mimi says. "Do you hear that? She's singing to her doll." At that, Mimi starts humming out the tune of
Rock-a-bye Baby
right along with the whispering--like some bizarro duet.

"No offense," Greta says, "but there's a shock treatment table with your name all over it."

"Sounds kinda hot," I say. "Is there room for two? I'll even let you strap me in." I give Mimi the sexy-eye, complete with raised eyebrows and pouted lips.

"Wait," Liza says, before Mimi can respond to my invitation. "I hear it too."

"You hear
singing}"
I ask.

But Liza doesn't answer and so I'm assuming Mimi's imagination has gone a little overboard.

But still, there's something there. The whispering is almost clear--the words almost recognizable.

"I've been waiting for you!" Mimi blurts. "Did you hear that? Just like the sign in the hydrotherapy room."

"It sounded more to me like 'Chet is a stud!'" I say.

Mimi rolls her eyes, choosing to ignore me. "It's