Keeping the engine running, Charlotte and Chuck hopped out and headed to the back of their ambulance. Half expecting to find the dead man walking around, they pulled open the doors and peeked inside, but the cab was deathly silent, nothing moved, and everything appeared to be in order. Scratching their heads, puzzled over what they heard, they were about to lock it up again when the body on the stretcher sat up. The white sheet slowly slipped off to reveal the man's blood-streaked face, and he sat motionless, staring at them with his hollow eye socket.
"Sir?" A hoarse whisper escaped Charlotte's parched throat. "Are... are you, all right?"
"Get off the island." The man belted. "Get off if you know what's good for you. Before she can steal your soul."
With that warning, the body collapsed back down, and death fell over the cab again with only the squawking of crows to remind the two medics that they themselves were still alive. With racing hearts and sweating palms, they slammed the doors shut and leaned against them, hoping to keep the dead man from getting out. With stagnant air sitting in their lungs, they looked over at each other, finally able to catch a breath. Charlotte noticed her partner was as pale as a corpse himself, and she worried about his well-being.
"W-what..." he gasped. "What was that? Did you see that Char? Please tell me you saw what I saw. Tell me I'm not going crazy."
"You are not going crazy." She reassured him. "I saw the same thing you did. Do you think he might still be alive?"
"What? After he yanked his eyeball and half his brain out? No way. No fucking way."
"We should go in and check just to make sure."
"Absolutely not. There is no way in hell I am getting in the back of that ambulance with him. If you really want to make sure, then you can go back and check it out yourself."
"Fine. Chicken."
With a jackhammering heart, Charlotte turned, and pried open one of the doors to steal a glance inside. Silence greeted her from the cab, and she handed the steel panel over to Chuck to hold as she climbed in. The body lay still on the stretcher, the white sheet draped over his lap where it fell. Picking up his wrist, she felt for a pulse, but found nothing. Fishing round behind her, she found a stethoscope and reached under the man's shirt for a listen. Static from the diaphragm crinkled through the earbuds—no thumping of the heart, no hiss of lungs filling with air—the man was as dead as the moment they found him. Putting the stethoscope down, Charlotte covered the body back up with the sheet and backed out of the ambulance for the fear he'd come back to life and attack her.
"Well? He dead?"
"As a door nail."
"What is going on here? What's happening on this cursed island."
"I don't know man, but let's just transport him to the morgue and go back to the station. I don't want to stay here longer than need be."
"I'm with you there, sister. But no more pulling over, no matter what we hear."
"Deal."
Getting back in her seat, Charlotte gripped the steering wheel with shaking hands. Even as she drove, her rational brain kept trying to explain what they saw, but no such explanation came to mind. There was only one explanation left—something supernatural was happening on the island—but it was so improbable she dared not consider it. To her side, the new hospital loomed over them, and she could finally breathe easy again. Realizing they didn't hear a single sound from the back, she stepped on the gas until she pulled into a small bay at the back of the hospital.
Chapter Nineteen
“It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment.”—Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns
S tanding in the deserted service entrance of the hospital, Charlotte and her partner waited for the elevator with the dead man between them. There was still something odd about the place, she thought, something unsettling. It was almost noon, one would expect the hospital staff to be moving about the building and hear talking and phones ringing, but once more, there was none of that there. The place was as deserted and silent as an abandoned building in an ancient ghost town lost to civilization. To make matters worse, the builders covered the glass on the doors with a dark tint, making the world outside appear as if night had fallen.
The ding of the elevator coming to a spot sounded like cannon fire, causing both medics to jump back. Sliding open, the metal doors revealed a dim interior with two flickering light bulbs overhead. Glancing at Chuck, Charlotte thought he seemed a bit nervous as small beads of sweat glistened on his brow. She didn't like the idea of going into a tiny, enclosed space either, but they had no other choice of getting the body down to the morgue. Gripping the sides of the gurney, she motioned her head for the elevator, and they cautiously wheeled the man in. With them safely inside the meal box, the doors shut, trapping them with a corpse who moments earlier was talking to them from the back of the ambulance.
Expecting the body to reanimate at any moment, they gripped the sides of the stretcher until their knuckles turned white. The ride down to the bottom level seemed to take an eternity and Charlotte held her breath until the basement light turned white and the door released them from their trap. Partially relieved to be out of the elevator, Charlotte glanced about the deathly quiet space and was instantly reminded how much she hated hospital basements. Fluorescent lights hummed above the concrete walls painted in mint green, casting haunting sulfur shadows on the floor, and the exposed metal pipes running over their heads creaked and moaned from the internal pressure, while a faint, damp scent of mildew covered up by a sharp smell of antiseptic surrounding them in a cramped, tube-like hallway.
"Let's drop this guy off and get out of here." Charlotte stared down the elongated hall. "I don't wish to be here any longer than need be."
"Well, better get moving then. Meat locker is all the way at the end, just past the room where they keep the drugs."
Pushing the stretcher down the hall, the echoes of the squeaky wheels bouncing off the wall sounded deafening. Charlotte could hear the pounding of her heart inside her chest as the hall seemed to stretch without an end. They passed several closed doors with no soul in sight until they reached the black metal door plastered with signs: morgue, staff only, keep door closed.
Turning the handle, they found the door to be unlocked, and stepped inside the hollow room with cold lockers on one side and two autopsy tables in the middle. Light bounced and glimmered off the polished stainless-steel surfaces. The place was organized and cleaned at an almost neurotic level. If it were not for the strange jug of blood in the room's corner, Charlotte would have said the place was never in use. As she looked around, an icy blast of air hit her, causing her to shiver, but tried as she might, she could not figure out where it came from.
"You spoke to the staff. Which cabinet do we put him in?"
"They said someone would have come put his last name on the tag for us. So, we are looking for a Moore."
"Well..." Charlotte spotted the only tag with writing on it, "I guess that would be the one. They were even nice enough to put him at stretcher level, so all we have to do is slide him in."
"What are we waiting for then? Let's go put him in the freezer and go back to the station. I don't like it here one bit."
Nodding in agreement, Charlotte pushed the stretcher forward and pulled on the latch of the small box to pull out the tray. Lifting the dead man, they slid him in and shut the door behind them. In the time it took them to transfer the body, the air inside the morgue got colder and staler. Wishing to return into the warm sunshine and fresh air of the outside, the two of them went for the door which suddenly slammed shut in front of them before a distinct sound rooted them in their spots.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
"What. Was. That?"
"I... I don't know." Charlotte cocked her head. "But it sounded like it came from the body locker behind us."
"S-s-should we go check it out?"
"Oh, hell no! I'm not sure about you, but I have had enough of that guy coming back to life to taunt us. Plus, you already checked him over twice, you said he is as dead as dead can be. Let's just forget about him and skedaddle on out of here. We can go hang out at the station house with Iris the rest of the day. Grab an ice cream at the creamery. Anything but deal with him again."
"Fair enough, lets move."
With one hand still firmly on their stretcher, Charlotte went to take a step forward when she caught something out of the corner of her eye, a dark shadow sliding along the wall. Suddenly the lights flickered. The stroboscopic effect caused the shadows to pulse on the walls, and she could have sworn one had a vaguely human shape to it. Around them, the dense air grew colder, and she could see the vapor of breath before the lights turned off, turned on, flickered, and stayed on. Holding her breath, her eyes darted around the morgue, waiting for something else to happen, but it never did.
Spurred on by fear, the two medics sprinted for the door, flinging it open and running out into the hall. Still holding on to the gurney, they wheeled it down as fast as it would go until they reached the other end. Cursing, Charles mashed the elevator button while Charlotte continually glanced over her shoulder. She thought she saw something lingering amongst the shadows as the lights went out one by one, darkening the hall gradually in black cells. The thought of taking the stairs crossed her mind more than once when the elevator doors opened, and they ran inside. The hall on the other end continued to grow darker, one square at a time, and the murmuring shadows almost reached them when the doors shut, and one loud bang on the door startled them before the elevator nudged upwards.
Exiting the hospital, they dared not look back, fearing the thing from the morgue had taken the stairs to pursue them. Instead, they shoved the gurney into the back of their ambulance, slammed the doors shut, and peeled out of the parking lot, heading for the station. Neither one of them dared to speak, and they sat inside the cab panting, trying to catch their breath. Charlotte didn't dare to relax until the brick building, and paneled garage doors of the station greeted them, signaling what they thought to be a safe haven. Little did either of them know that their nightmare was only beginning.
Chapter Twenty
“I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night.”—H.P. Lovecraft
T he first thing Charlotte noticed before pulling up to the station was the seven crows sitting on a window ledge, glancing into the distance. Pulling into the bay, another thing struck her, the eerie graveyard silence. Once the engine of the ambulance cut off, nothing stirred in the background, the building appeared abandoned. Exchanging worried glances, Charlotte and Chuck went for the stairs.
Walking up one step at a time, their footsteps sounded thunderous inside the hollowness of the stairwell. They checked the second floor, but no one was there, not even Iris at her desk. Frowning, they continued to the third floor where they were relieved to see a fireman sitting in one of the recliners, his face buried in the morning paper. The man paid no attention to them, and they both went for the doors when the lights above their heads began to pulsate as they did back at the hospital.
With each flicker of lights, Charlotte thought she could see something in the shadows as the room beyond the glass filled up with thick, black smoke. The mist continued to swirl on the other side, but the man sitting in the chair seemed to be oblivious to it. He continued to page through his paper as if there was no light show going on in the building, and no smoke gathering around him. Then, the lights finally blew out, leaving them in the gloom, for even the windows darkened, blocking out any light from the outside. A dank draft flowed past them, filling the small hall between the medics and the break room with an unnatural chill which reeked of sulfur and decay. In the darkness, a bleat from a wounded animal pierced the deafening silence, filling Charlotte with soul-searing panic. She sensed it was in the room with them, and she couldn’t begin to surmise what it wanted.
Suddenly, the lights flickered back on, and through the dark strips of vapor, she spotted the pigman standing behind the fireman. Beside her, Charles let out a gasp and grabbed hold of her wrist, pulling her back. She didn't move, she stood paralyzed in place as she looked at the creature looming over the unsuspecting man, its broad snout huffing out plumes of light mist that churned and joined the blackness. Pulling away from her partner, she went over and slapped her hand on the glass, shouting for the man to move. The fireman turned to regard her with a frown, and the pigman tilted his head to her, letting out an ear-spliting roar. Turning behind him, the man let out a blood-curdling scream and darted for the door, but he did not make it. The creature grabbed hold of him and dragged him down into the mist as his victim clung to the glass, sliding down into the abyss as he vanished from sight.
"W-what was that?" Charles' voice was shrill with panic. "You saw that too, right? Tell me you saw that too."
"Yes. I've been seeing it since I got on this island."
"What? You have?"
"Yes. It's been following me, but I have no clue as to why."
Charlotte was getting ready to tell Charles to get out of the building when the lights flickered out again, leaving them trapped in a blinding darkness. She felt the chill in the air, it was the icy grip of death, grabbing hold of her. Then, she smelled it, the acrid scent of a rotting corpse, putrid and sickening. Knowing what was coming, she backed up against the wall, trying to find the door, and pushing Chuck with her. He did not protest, he was shaking, she knew he felt it too, and he was trying to find the door to escape. She heard the handle jiggle, and the lights came back on, revealing the head of the pig right in front of her.
"Run," she screamed, "let's get out of here."
Charles was the first to run out the door, and Charlotte was close behind him. Her sweaty palms gripped the railing as she jumped down three to four steps at a time, too scared to look back. She had reached the second-floor landing before the lights started to oscillate and a low, deep groan came from behind her. Finally, daring to steal a glance over her shoulder, her heart sank into her ankles as she spotted the black-cloaked creature slithering down the stairs after her. Letting a soft scream escape her throat, she turned and ran even faster as her heart leaped painfully in her chest and her lungs burned from exhaustion.
On the last stretch of stairs, when she had the rear door in sight, she tripped over her own two feet and flew down to the bottom landing, slapping the concrete loud enough to make a whispering echo around her. Her body screamed in agony from hitting the ground, but she pushed herself up and ran for the door, pushing on the metal bar which would not budge. Defeat crept over her, the creature was going to kill her, but she pushed and pulled on the handle regardless, trying to pry her way out.
"Let me out." She hollered and pounded on the door, hoping that Charles or someone else would hear her plea. "Someone let me out. Please. I don't want to die."
Her voice grew hoarse, and she could barely talk through the sobs. Hearing a clatter behind her, she turned to see the pig creature slink down the last set of stairs, he was almost upon her. No, she thought, please don't let me go out like this, not yet, not now. Above her, the lights flashed, went out, and blinked back on, revealing the creature standing nose to nose with her. Its elongated snout snorted at her, and she gagged from the putrid air coming from it. Tears streamed down her face, and she turned her head away from it, squeezing her eyes shut.
"Please," she murmured, "don't kill me."
To her surprise, the pigman did not take her. Instead, an icy hand reach out to wipe the tears from her face and lift her chin back to face it. Forcing open one of her eyes, she saw the dead eye sockets looking at her. The pigman's breaths were gentle, she realized it meant her no harm. Straightening up, she glanced at the creature. She wished to ask it what it wanted, when it lifted its hand and pointed to his left,
as if reading her thoughts. It was pointing towards the old hospital, and she wanted to know why. But before she had a chance to ask it, the pigman nodded and vanished in a plume of black smoke, leaving her standing alone in a deserted stairwell with eyes full of tears. Turning, she tried the door again, and to her surprise, it opened, letting her stumble out into the fresh afternoon air.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't.”—Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis
L eaning bent over on her knees, Charlotte heaved to remove the staleness the creature seemed to produce. She did not know why he let her go, but deep down she knew it wanted to help her somehow. It was one of the good guys despite its gruesome appearance. Her knees and elbows still ached from her fall, but the warm rays of the sun were quickly making the pain a distant memory. From the corner of the building, she saw something move and glanced up, only to see old Cyrus approaching her with a warm smile on his face. Seeing the man made her forget all about her encounter from a moment prior, and she lifted her hand to wave at him.
"You feeling all right, young lady? You look like you just seen a ghost."
"No, no ghost. Darn door just jammed, and I got stuck inside. I yelled for someone to help, but I guess no one heard me, so I had a mild panic attack at the thought of being stuck in the stairwell all night. Why is the station empty anyway? Where did everyone go?"
"Oh, that." He continued to smile. "Well, we seem to have a special guest here in town. I genuine celebrity. Everyone was so eager to meet him they all rushed out of the station, much to Miss. Owen's chagrin. Speaking of the boss, she said she wants you upfront, stat. I think she got a special job just for you."
"Oh, all right. I'll go to her right away. Where is she?"
"Everyone is back out front of the station house. I'd hurry. I think she's about to lose the war with her staff."
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