Project 17 (9 page)

"What?"
Greta asks, annoyed by the interruption.

"We just wanted a little privacy," Tony explains.

"Are you guys deaf?" Mimi asks, butting her head in. "We've been calling you!"

"You can't do that," I bark, not giving them time to answer. "You can't just take off like that."

"Why?" Tony asks, his voice all high and whiney. "What's the big deal? We were only at the end of the hall."

"The big deal is that this placed is messed up," I say.

"What happened back there?" Mimi asks me again.

I tell them about the doll I found, adding that the rush of the door probably made the thing waver back and forth, that there must have been some sensor thing hidden under

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the doll's dress--something to detect motion, causing the tape recorder to trigger at just the right time.

"Did you actually see a recorder?" Tony asks.

I shake my head.

"Let's go check it out," Mimi says.

I shake my head, telling myself that there
had
to be a recorder. That's the only logical explanation. "I want to keep moving forward."

"Hey, is this where the party's at?" Chet asks, behind me now. Liza stands beside him, her face all white like she's just seen a ghost.

"Obviously some of us decided to have our own private party," I say, gesturing to Greta and Tony, still standing only inches apart.

"Cut them a little slack," Chet says. "I can see the appeal--barred windows, piss-stained mattress." He gestures toward the rubber mattress on the floor.

"Visual stimuli," Mimi adds, nodding at the giant penis spray painted on the wall. She goes over to the bed and checks out all four sides, hell-bent on finding more crap.

"Shouldn't you be wearing gloves?" Greta asks her.

"Probably," she says, trying to pull one of the mattress seams, without any luck. She lets out a sigh and looks toward the door. "Hey, this is one of the seclusion rooms." She points to the tiny square window at the top of the door where people can peep in. "They stripped people down and threw them in here as punishment."

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"Sounds kind of hot," Chet says. "Anybody for a reenactment?"

"Let's go," I say, still thinking about that messed-up doll. "We need to stay together."

Or else something heinous is gonna happen. I just know it.

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MIMI

THIS PLACE IS DARKER
than I ever imagined. Not dark as in black--though it's plenty black, too--but dark as in morbid. Sad. Eerie beyond belief.

It's not just about the mess, either. It's about everything. It's about the pieces of those who stayed here--the pieces left behind.

Like the rotted deck of cards.

And the dress with the burned sleeves.

The torn bedsheets.

And the shredded lace curtains hanging over the barred-up windows.

The corroded walls with peeling paint.

And the signs on every door we pass through:

BEWARE, PATIENTS WILL ESCAPE!

EXERCISE EXTREME PRECAUTION UPON ENTERING!

WARNING: MAKE SURE THE DOOR IS SHUT

AND LOCKED BEHIND YOU!

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With each one, I get this weird little knot in my gut. Like, even though the place is vacant, I feel as though something's behind these doors--some pent-up, angry energy just busting to get out.

Derik leads us up and down several flights of stairs, exploring the various wings until some of them begin to blur together. This place is like one giant mouse maze.

We end up in some back area, where all the really disturbed patients lived. I know because there's nothing more than a bare mattress on the floor--and all the windows have bars.

No curtains.

No pillows.

No bathrooms.

You can still smell the stench of human waste.

I pick up a bunch of patient file folders along the way, as well as some other relics I come across: a journal, a clown mask, an old magazine, a bar of soap with teeth marks embedded into the side.

And a watercolor picture--one I just had to have.

We follow Derik into a room, where a bunch of kids obviously had some fun. The walls are all painted over with bloodred splotches. And someone's written the words: "Christine Belle died here. Her body is buried out in the garden."

"Christine Belle," I whisper, looking down at the watercolor clutched in my hand. I flip it over to view the initials C. B., knowing somehow that it's the same

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person. The eeriness of it---of the coincidence, maybe-- sends a chill right through the center of my skull. If it's possible to even feel a chill there.

Liza turns away and waits by the door, like the possibility of the graffiti being true upsets her. Meanwhile, my focus shifts to the ground. The floor is littered with broken beer bottles, cigarette butts, and dirty old underwear.

"I need a break," I tell Derik, suddenly feeling weighted down by all my loot.

"You?"
he asks, raising an eyebrow, like the idea of me needing a break surprises him.

"Ditto," Chet chimes in. "I need to take a leak."

"Break time!" Greta declares.

"Fine," Derik says, still working his camera. "Let's go."

Using the map, we move through several more wards and wings, up and down a couple more flights of stairs, through a couple rec rooms. We somehow make it to the reception room of the administration building, where we finally dump our bags.

"Okay," Tony says. "A short break, then how about we get serious? Film something really dramatic." He pulls what appear to be a stack of scripts and a director's megaphone from his bag.

"Are you kidding me?" I ask him. "This isn't
The Young and the Restless."

"More like
The Young and the Sexless,"
Derik says, motioning to Chet.

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Chet asks,

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standing so close to Liza that he might as well be humping her leg.

"It means stop molesting my cast." Derik takes a portable dolly out of his backpack and sets it up so that his camera rests on top.

"Wait." Greta throws her hand up as though to stop traffic. "Don't you want a high-concept, no-filler film? I mean, you don't want to bore people to death only ten minutes in, do you?"

Derik swivels the dolly to aim the camera at her.

"She's got that right," Tony says, using the megaphone, his voice echoing even more. "People will be asking for their money back before they even make a dent in their popcorn."

"Right," Greta says, striking a pose for the camera-- hands on hips, back arched, stomach sucked in. "Which is why I was thinking we could have me act like I'm trapped in a room or something. I could be struggling to get out."

"Or maybe we could just have you trapped in a room," I suggest, faking a smile. "No acting required."

Greta lets out a huff, still overacting. "If I'm going to be involved in this project, I need it to have purpose ... to have edge ... to have
spice."

"Spice?" Chet perks up.

Tony hands a script to each of us, but Derik totally ignores it, instead filming Greta's every bossy move.

"I thought we were supposed to be taking a break," I say, unzipping my coat to unload the tonnage of file

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folders I've squirreled inside, as well as the wax paper-covered notebook and the watercolor picture. I pile them on the floor, out of the way, and then pull a bunch of candles from my bag and set them up in a circle to establish a cozy area--if the word cozy could even apply here.

"Séance time?" Chet asks, rubbing his hands together.

"Yeah, I thought we could summon an evil spirit to take over your body and make you perform sadistic rituals."

"Sounds cool," he says.

I roll my eyes, noticing how Liza is sitting off by herself, eyeing my pile of stuff, probably wondering what my deal is. And so I listen to Chet ramble on about some candlelit picnic he attempted with a girl--how he accidentally burned his butt in the process--for exactly the length of time that it takes me to light all the candles. Then I join Liza, scooting in between her and my stack of file folders.

"Still feeling like this place doesn't want us here?" I ask.

"Make fun if you want."

"I'm not making fun. I'm just curious. What did you mean by all that?"

She shrugs instead of answering.

"You don't want to be here, do you?"

"Do
you?"
she asks. "Can you honestly say that this is fun for you?"

I shrug, wondering what she was thinking by coming

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here in the first place--Of if she was even thinking at all. "This place is definitely intense," I say, in an effort to play nice. "Part of it pulls you in. Another part wants to spit you out."

Liza's eyes lock on mine for just a second, and I almost catch sight of a trembling lip, like maybe she gets what I'm saying.

"Ate you okay?" I ask.

But instead of answering, she looks at the watercolor I found.

"This place is screwing with you, isn't it?" I continue, pushing the picture toward her. "It's screwing with me, too. Just look at this painting. One minute I'm drawn to it; something tells me to pull it down, that I have to know more, and so I do, only to find the artist's initials on the back. Then, two minutes later, I see a name on the wall-- a name that shares those
same
initials. I mean, it's quite a coincidence, don't you think?"

"I'm not sure I believe in coincidences."

"So you think it was intentional?" I ask, focusing on the place in the picture where there should be a heart. "Do you think that something greater--some external force, maybe--wanted me to make the connection?"

"External force?"

"Yeah. Like, maybe Christine Belle, maybe her spirit was reaching out to me. Maybe she's trying to haunt me." I flip the picture over to look at her initials again. Then I grab the journal from the stack of file folders. "I found this

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in the same room as the painting. It was wedged inside one of the mattresses. Do you want to read some of it with me?"

Liza stares at it, her mouth dropping open like she's seriously tempted. "Maybe not," she says finally, though unable to take her eyes off it. A moment later she gets up--just like that--as if the temptation is too strong and she has to get away.

Meanwhile, Derik's got the camera zoomed right at me. "We're heading downstairs to the tunnels," he says. "I want to shoot some of my storyboard stuff."

"Well, I want to take a break," I remind him.

"Break's over." He smiles. "Back to work."

"Not for me. I just sat down."

"Yeah for you," he insists. "Come on; we need to stick together."

"Why?" I balk. "I have a map. I have candles, a cell phone, a walkie-talkie, my flashlight--"

"I
can stay with her," Chet offers. "Oh. Yeah. I feel safe," I say.

"Liza, I'd like you to come, too," Derik says, practically drooling as she pulls the elastic from her pony tail. Her hair spills down in silky waves, totally making me want to hurl.

And I'm not alone. Greta rolls her eyes, pausing a moment from running a hairbrush through her curly dark locks. She uses the brush to thwack her beloved Tony on the side of his head. The boy has got his eyes seriously

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lodged right on Liza's chest.

"I was thinking we could get a cool shot of you holding a candle," Derik continues.

"I don't know," Liza says, chewing nervously at her bottom lip. "I may just want to sit for a little while to get my bearings--to get used to this place, you know?" She readjusts her hair into a grandmalike bun, but she still looks nauseatingly perfect.

"Maybe you
should
stay behind," Greta says, turning to Liza. "I mean, it's probably going to be super scary down there."

"Really?" Liza's eyes widen.

"Totally," Greta continues, feeding Liza's feat. "I mean, there's probably going to be all kinds of creepy stuff happening down there--blinking lights, faulty equipment, spirits passing through us. And we're probably going to be a while. We have a lot to shoot, so you might want to stay up here with the crew."

"That wouldn't mean more screen time for you," I ask, "would it?"

Greta shrugs, but my comment doesn't seem to bother her. "I guess now that you mention it, I could do that candle scene."

"Or
me,"
Tony pipes up.

"Don't worry," Derik says, drawing his sweatshirt over Liza's shoulders
once again
--obviously a regular maneuver in his repertoire of playerisms. "Nothing weird is gonna happen down there. Liza can stay close to me."