The Haunting of Beacon Hill

by Ambrose Ibsen

  She toyed with her phone awhile, attempted to do some research, but was demoralized at the lack of resources at her disposal. Her toolkit as a librarian was vast—but presently, all she could do away from her desk was to punch search terms into her phone and pray for something substantive to pop up. By the sounds of it, August was hitting pay dirt; perhaps he'd stumble upon something that would explain this sordid business—a solution that would help them put a stop to this haunting for good.

  Sadie watched the seconds tick by on the big clock on the wall.

  The long wait began.

  20

  She'd been tortured by dreams of her dead mother, was being actively pursued by a nightmarish ghoul and hadn't known a good night's sleep in days, but the macaroni and cheese served in the hospital cafeteria was pretty good, and at this point Sadie was willing to take a win wherever she could get one.

  Eating her modest lunch out of a styrofoam clamshell, she walked a circuit around the first floor, taking in the landmarks. There were something like three different gift shops, all told, and their wares were all slightly different. One dealt in snacks, gum and flowers; the next in gifts for infants. The last peddled higher-quality fare like hospital-branded clothing, tacky home décor and locally-made kitsch. Across from this last there sat a non-denominational chapel where guests or patients could spend some quiet time in prayer, and Sadie enjoyed a solid twenty minutes of solace there before moseying on.

  Eventually, though, she found her way back to the cafeteria and decided to settle there. She dumped her empty container in the trash and parked it at a corner table near the window where she could gauge the smalling of the light minute by minute. She'd nodded off in the cafeteria for close to two hours and had then wandered the halls, poked around in shops, for nearly two more. Hours remained before August was set to show, however, and it occurred to her that she ought to try and do something constructive while she waited. So what if she didn't have access to the entire library system—to its collection of local materials and newspaper archives? With her phone, almost fully-charged thanks to a conveniently-placed outlet, she could at least do some digging into the nature of ghosts, right?

  She spent the next few hours searching, taking occasional breaks to use the bathroom, or to grab caffeinated drinks from the cafeteria. Her journey started on video sites, where she sought out footage of alleged hauntings. She was curious if anyone had ever captured something on camera that aligned with her own supernatural experiences. Burning through a hundred different videos, though, she came away with only bitter disappointment. There were loads of “screamer” videos—pranks; there were pointless recordings of “orbs”, which were clearly lens flares or dust motes. There were also plenty of vague shots depicting misty “spirits” that looked like nothing at all. At best, the videos were dull and uneventful; at worst, they were obvious frauds.

  She turned next to sites where users discussed their own dealings with the supernatural. Stories of possession, of poltergeists and bumps in the night were common, but in her experience none of them carried any weight. No one on any of the sites she checked quite described the spirits of the dead the way she'd encountered them, and so their testimonies could only be met with skepticism. Novice magicians, dabblers in the so-called “black arts”, talked about their involved rituals for conjuring or dismissing such things, but came off as lame role-players. Experiments with tape recorders regularly yielded unimpressive results—the EVPs, in general, were so muddled and quiet that they sounded nothing like what the claimants said they were.

  She took intermittent looks out the window. In the vast lot outside, cars wheeled in and out in a steady stream. Hospital employees clad in scrubs of every imaginable color drifted up the steps and entered the building through some unseen side door at a regular clip. The rain would turn up again for a brief burst, then the sun would come to the fore, only to retreat a little into the grey and give way to a minutes-long shower. A tall fence lined the borders of this parking lot, and beyond it were rows of handsome little houses. Now and then, when the rain was put on pause, the tenants of said houses would wander out to check their mail, or to haul garbage to the curb.

  But the sunlight was fading. What could she expect to see out in that rainswept lot when all the world was dark? She ignored the first signs of dusk and stuck closely to her phone, wading through page after page of crap in the hopes of finding a gem.

  The sky was darkening when she was distracted from her reading by a call from August. “Hey, what's up?”

  “Phew,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. “You're still alive, eh? Here I was afraid Mother Maggot had gotten to you—that all this research I've been doing has been for naught.” He cleared his throat. “OK, here's how it's going to go. I'm supposed to close alone tonight since you're not here, but I'm going to bounce at nine, sharp. I'm already shutting off computers and stuff, and I've been handling returns during every free moment, so at nine, when the last person walks out the door, I'm flipping off the lights and locking up.”

  “Tomorrow's opener might have some choice words for you if you don't get everything squared away,” she warned.

  “Maybe, but I'm off tomorrow, so someone else will get it in the ear!”

  “So, you'll be heading over at nine? Did you find anything?”

  “I sure did,” he said with evident pride. “I've got a sack full of books—stuff from the local history section, some newspaper scans... I hope you're ready for a lecture.” His tone hardened a little as he continued. “To be honest with you, this stuff is... kinda dark. When I went looking into the house, into Mother Maggot, I didn't expect to find...” He trailed off. “Anyway, I'll explain when I get there. Sit tight.”

  The passage of the next hour felt immeasurably longer than its sixty minutes. The clock on the wall—the one she'd been referencing for the better part of her day—counted down the time with a kind of stubbornness. She watched the second hand click round the face, and though it may have only been her tired eyes playing tricks on her, she thought she saw it double back a few times. It was when she couldn't bear to stare up at it any longer that she decided to get up and stretch her legs again.

  There was a second reason Sadie got up and left the dining area. She set out because it was almost empty and she'd found herself well-isolated in the corner near the dimming window. How strange it was for her to take flight from solitude. Once, she'd been the kind of creature to thrive on it. Now, aloneness seemed to bring with it the sure promise of danger. In the hope of enjoying the company—and protection—of other human beings, she migrated to those sections where others might congregate in higher numbers.

  As the hours had passed, the bustle had lessened, though. Visitors to the hospital were fewer now that the evening was pressing on, and though she encountered a few near the entrances their scarcity and manner—for many of them were distraught after visiting loved ones or discussing care plans and diagnoses—brought little security. The ebb and flow of staff had slowed, too. At around seven that evening there'd been a noisy rush out the doors and a simultaneous influx owed to the changing of shifts, but now, an hour later, lab-coat-wearing passersby were harder to find.

  Sadie walked laps around the first floor in a daze, and every time she passed a window she found the sky dimmer. She wasn't sure what awaited her at sundown. It was entirely possible she was jumping the gun; that nightfall would bring no horrors and that her dwelling in this very public space would be sufficient to drive off any that might otherwise materialize. But then, Mother Maggot had already appeared within these walls, hadn't she? Sadie looked up at the ceiling, as though she could see through it to the third floor, and recalled her initial meeting with Ophelia in the psych ward.

  The gift shops were all closed and the clack of her lonely footfalls broke up the mounting silence as she continued out of the lobby and down a narrow hall lined in offices. As she walked she kept a hand pressed against her pocket, her fingers tracing the outline of her phone. She wishe
d it would ring, that August would call her with some kind of good news—answers to her questions, a promise that he was on his way—but it was silent.

  What had he found in his research? Would it be enough to put a stop to this haunting—to throw Mother Maggot off her trail? She thought to call him then, to grill him on it, but simply shuffled on in contemplative silence.

  She was quite deep in her thoughts when, at one junction, she looked around and realized she didn't much recognize her surroundings anymore. She came to a stop and had a good look around, sure that she must be mistaken, but her survey of this hall convinced her that she had, in fact, distractedly taken a wrong turn during her last circuit. How long she'd wandered this way—and where she was in particular—was uncertain. She was little bothered by this; there were signs hanging on virtually every wall in this place, and soon enough she'd happen upon one that would direct her back into familiar territory. Rather than turning around, she charged on ahead, sure that she hadn't wandered too far from the right track and planning to follow signs back to the lobby—or, if necessary, to flag down the next staff member she encountered for directions.

  She was navigating a narrow hall with walls of brick, and the dim, boxy light fixtures cast a very mild light overhead. Compared to much of the hospital, which had been recently renovated as she understood it, this passage appeared cramped and dated. What's more, it seemed virtually empty. She thought little of it initially, and turned a corner expecting to find an information desk or sign that would orient her.

  Instead, she stepped into an unfamiliar lobby. There was a desk—unmanned at that moment—and a bank of elevators. These elevators, she discovered at studying the listings on the wall, led to doctor's offices, and beyond them, at the end of another hall, stood an automatic glass door that brought one into a parking garage. This part of the hospital obviously didn't get much use this late in the day, for the lights had been dimmed and the only sound to be heard came from the noisy ventilation system.

  Sadie idled in the lobby for a few moments, trying to make sense of the signs and find her way back to the other side of the hospital. She would have gladly returned to the cafeteria then, to the chapel, but the signage was hard to make sense of. The section she now stood in was called ENTRANCE R if the massive sign over the automatic door was to be trusted, but it seemed an arbitrary designation just then, and a careful study of a wall-mounted map only complicated things further. Locations were outlined with obtuse names; she understood words like “lobby”, but the map dealt in confusing titles such as “DIAGNOSTICS” and “ENTRANCES C-F”.

  The quiet, her unfamiliarity with this space and its unpleasant dimness gave rise to a creeping dread as she worked over the map. She was thankful, then, when the automatic door at the end of the hall slid open to admit someone coming from the parking garage. Sadie turned, hoping to catch a staff member she could ask for directions.

  The door opened with a hiss, admitting the summer warmth into the passage for four, maybe five seconds, and then it slid closed. For that same duration, she stood and stared at it from the opposite end of the hall, waiting.

  No one came through the door.

  Huh? That's strange... Sadie was hardly an expert on such things; she knew that doors like these worked with motion sensors, and it was entirely possible that the mechanism had merely malfunctioned. The timing, though, sent a shudder coursing through her all the same, and even as she looked back to the map, she couldn't help wondering if that was what had really happened.

  Her attention was once again yanked from the map when she heard a single footfall issuing from the direction of that misfiring door. Her shoulders tensed so hard that they nearly bumped her ears. The sound had been soft, as if issued by a bare foot against the tile floor, but had undoubtably come from the same direction. She fixed a hard stare down the hall, seeking the source, and even squeaked out, “Is anyone there?”

  Still, the hall remained empty.

  Sadie's interest in the map had evaporated. Her interest was now in leaving this dark stretch behind and returning, through whatever means necessary, to familiar ground. She passed the unmanned desk, noting a number of divergent hallways that might lead back to her intended track, and nursed her inflamed imagination while picking one at random. The door was probably just acting up, she assured herself, chin up. And there's no one down that hall—you'd have seen them through the door before they even came inside. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as she considered the possibility it was a supernatural visitor, but even for this potentiality she furnished a sensible explanation. It can't be a ghost—it can't possibly be her—because if it was, you'd be able to see her coming.

  Sadie marched solemnly down this new hall, passing closed doors, dark stairwells and still another bank of elevators. None of it was familiar, but she told herself she'd happen upon the right way soon enough. Black, circular security cameras were common features in the ceilings, and the corners all boasted large quarter dome mirrors that allowed wanderers to look around bends and avoid collisions with others who might turn onto their same track from the opposite direction. All this acted like a pleasant balm on her aching nerves—all of it made her feel “safe”, at least, in a superficial way.

  But then she heard it again—a footstep. Distant, to be sure, but of the same strange, soft-soled variety as the last, and not nearly so distant as she would have liked. She startled at the sound of it—and froze as it was followed up with yet another. Sadie caught her own terrified face in the bulbous dome mirror as she hooked a sharp right and pressed her back to the brick wall.

  From around the way she'd just come, there issued now a slow but steady progression of steps. Faint and fleshy, the gait responsible for them seemed closer to a stagger than a calm and easy walk. The steps had grown damnably close by the time she summoned the courage to peel herself from the wall and look around the corner, but when she finally did she found no one standing there.

  Where the hell are these footsteps coming from, then? she wondered. And if it is a ghost, then why can't I see it?

  She told herself she was mishearing—going deaf, possibly—and prepared to continue briskly on her way, but for an ill-advised, second-long glance into the corner mirror, she fell back against the wall.

  They hadn't been steps; what Sadie had been hearing had been the clop of malformed black hands up and down the brick walls. A face was reflected in that mirror—the face of something that clung to that wall, crawled across it, perpendicular to the floor—and it presently strained on its dark spindle of a neck to peer around the corner at her. The midnight-colored bulk of the body shook furtively as it turned its bone-white face to meet her.

  Sadie jerked backward, flopped against the wall as the lights above her began to flicker. The porcelain brow, its every infested crease a-writhing, was the first thing to round the corner; then came the wide, circular sockets, gleaming chaotically with the stare of a million compound eyes and the membranous flutter of wings. The lily-white lips were curled back to accommodate the stirring of so many twitching black legs, and the mouth burgeoned all the way to the rear of the throat for the legion of chittering bodies packed therein. Beyond the almost deafening buzzing there rose the nauseous notes of a deep, mocking vocalization that was as much a retch as it was a laugh. “AH-AH-AH-AH-AH-AH...”

  The hideous thing dropped suddenly to the floor, landing with a rustle like a plastic bag, and then leapt onto its two jagged legs. Its body, like a wad of chewed, black gum, took on something of the humanoid as it hobbled at her. Thin, disproportionate arms reached out and at their ends waggled greedy, hazy digits.

  Sadie pushed off the wall and launched herself down the hallway at full-tilt. She still had no idea where it would lead, but so long as she could evade those groping hands, escape that vomitous laughter, it didn't matter where she ended up. She stomped to the very end of the hall, turned to her right, then slammed through a pair of metal double doors. The impact nearly toppled her, but she regain
ed her balance and raced on, finding herself in a new passage whose walls were the painted plaster she was accustomed to. Bumping into a handrail and descending a gentle ramp, she fell into another door and, passing through it with a gasp, found herself in a familiar atrium.

  The glass skylight overhead was dark at this late hour, but the room she now stood in was flooded with fluorescent lights. The walkway to the right would lead her back to one of the gift shops, to the chapel and cafeteria. A few passersby gave her strange looks as they lounged in the plush chairs near the exit doors. An announcement—a page to one of the in-house doctors—sounded cheerfully overhead.

  Despite the weird looks, she jogged all the way to the cafeteria before collapsing into a chair at the center of the dining room. It was there that August found her a half-hour later, still shaking.

  21

  “She isn't like the others,” pleaded Sadie as he began unpacking his materials and setting them out on the table. “I don't know what she is. I... I just saw her, before you arrived, but somehow she hid from me until she got real close.” She tugged at his sleeve and gave his arm a hard shake. “I've never encountered something like this before.”

  August finished unloading his bag, then motioned to the stack of books and papers, at least two feet high. “I've been working on this all day, and I think I've found some good information.” He looked over his shoulder and scanned the quiet dining area. “Is she here with us now?”

  Sadie joined him in panning across the room. Except for a custodian pushing a mop near the cafeteria entrance, the two of them appeared completely alone. Lately, though, mere appearances had been a tricky thing. “I don't think so,” she replied tentatively.