by Frazer Lee
“She’s coming for you,” she drawls, her voice as broken as her neck.
Victoria wails, and I grab hold of her hand, willing her to keep her shit together even as I’m wondering if I’m about to lose my own.
Annie shuffles in a twisted and broken gait along the corridor, something slippery trailing along behind her. I realize with fright that it’s the skipping rope. The one she was hanging from the tree by. It slithers along, limp and gray, like a decaying umbilical cord.
“She’s coming for you, and you can’t stop her,” Annie intones.
I blink away the tears that, strangely, have formed at the corners of my eyes and look at Victoria. She looks like she might pass out at any moment, so I squeeze her hand. Realization dawns on her face as I make my move.
She follows me, more as a result of my still holding on to her hand than any other reason.
If we knocked Annie down once, together, then we can do it again, together.
I hear Victoria roar as we rush Annie. Victoria sounds like a berserker going into battle. And that is exactly what she has become. Annie’s hideous cackle is cut short as we slam into her upper body. Our hands are still locked together, our arms becoming a limbo pole. Annie is lifted from the floor on impact and actually tumbles, head over heels, before landing with a crack of her head on the corridor floor, the rope coiling beside her.
Neither one of us looks back.
We reach the door to the swimming pool and pause to catch our breaths. Victoria pulls at my hand and I realize I’m still holding on to hers. Her mouth curves into an awkward smile as she retrieves her hand. The fear is gone from her eyes now and she almost looks amused.
“That felt good,” she says.
I’m glad for her that it did, but I’m not sure if I’m feeling anything in particular about it. The act of rushing Annie and knocking her over seems to have been some kind of rite of passage to Victoria. To me, though, it was just an act of survival.
“Does anything faze you at all? Ever?” Victoria asks.
I don’t really know how to respond. I don’t think she noticed my tears back there. She was probably too preoccupied to notice. You know, what with the running and the screaming, and all of that.
Her smile becomes a bemused look. “You’re a strange girl,” she says, “really very strange.”
I don’t have time to reply – can’t reply – because behind Victoria, I see a pale, gray hand slither from the doorway. It slides across the surface of the wall, dripping wet.
I try to speak but can’t.
(I guess some things do faze me a little bit, after all.)
Victoria sees something is wrong and turns to look in the direction of my gaze.
She gasps as Saffy emerges from behind the swimming pool door, her clothes plastered wetly to her skin. Saffy’s eyes are dead to the world, almost completely white but with sickly traces of yellow where her pupils used to be. And those dead eyes seem to find us, out here in the corridor, and she smiles.
“Oh, no,” Victoria says.
As Saffy smiles, water spills from her mouth and trickles onto the floor. She lurches toward Victoria, who screams and backs away before holding on to my shoulder for support.
More water spills from Saffy’s mouth as she speaks, along with a foul, sewer-like smell. Her speech is guttural and half-drowned. And there is a disturbing, childlike glee in her voice.
“She won’t stop now. She’s coming for you, Emily.”
Saffy lurches toward me now. Each footfall makes a wet, slapping sound.
I look down at the floor and see her feet leaving wet footprints on the floor as she walks. I look to Victoria and see the rising terror in her eyes. A feeling begins to grow inside of me, a coldness that starts in the pit of my stomach and then quickly spreads out into my arms and legs. My veins turn to ice, and I feel my skin growing cold. My heart beats faster.
I’m not fazed. This is something else. This must be what it’s like to be truly afraid. To be stripped down to what’s at the base of being human. And it’s a useful feeling, because it gives my mind new focus. It feels like energy, similar to what I experienced with Victoria a short while ago, but even more powerful and focusing.
I look at Saffy and her mouth is leaking so much water it is as though she has an entire swimming pool of the stuff inside of her body. I decide that I don’t want to feel her touching me with those dead, moist fingers. I decide that I don’t want to hear another word from that drowned throat of hers.
“Fuck you, Saffron,” I say.
And then I turn and run.
Victoria isn’t far behind. And neither is Saffy, her wet footsteps increasing in speed as she pursues us both.
We turn a corner into another part of the building. The corridor splits. I hang a right, purely on instinct. Then I curse my shitty instincts and skid to a halt, seeing another lurching figure up ahead.
It is Jess, all covered in blood.
“She’s coming for you, Emily,” she says, her lips flecked with vomit.
Seems like everyone just wants to join the party.
Jess grins, and it makes me feel sick to see all but a couple of her teeth are gone from her mouth, exposing bare and bleeding gums. The whites of her eyes glint in the darkness. Her bony fingers claw at the air, searching us out. Where Saffy left a watery trail behind her as she walked, Jess leaves bloody footprints on the floor with each step.
It’s a gruesome sight.
Victoria catches up to me and stops dead in her tracks, seeing Jess’s cadaverous body lurching toward us. We retreat, but our backward trajectory means that Saffy will be upon us any moment. No choice now but to head the other way along the corridor, to the left.
“This way,” I say and – even as the words escape my lips – I know they’re useless.
With a sickening series of bone-sharp cracks, Annie rounds the other corner, skipping rope dragging behind her. Annie’s head dangles so limply from her broken neck that it’s upside-down. Her white eyes gleam blank from their shadowy sockets.
“She’s coming for you,” Annie says, her voice a hideously drawn-out whisper.
She drags her twisted limbs down the corridor toward us and each movement sounds as though it is unlocking some deeply broken part of her body.
“Won’t stop until she gets you,” Saffy cackles wetly.
We’re trapped between three phantoms, and they’re each closing in on us.
I feel Victoria clutch on to my arm in fear. Together, we back away from the unholy trio of dead inmates. Then I realize where we’re standing.
Right beside us, the entrance to the clock tower staircase looms.
Chapter Twenty-One
To Haunt Us Again and Again
“We can’t go up there,” Victoria says.
There’s no real panic in her voice; she’s just stating a fact. And I know she’s speaking the truth. If we climb the stairs to the clock tower, there will be no other way down. But with a glance in each direction from the stairwell alcove, all I can see are the dead, white eyes of Saffy and the others closing in. All I can hear are the horrible clicking sounds of Annie’s bones, the dragging rope, and the wetness of Jess and Saffy’s footfalls on the hard floor as they creep ever closer to us.
“We could try to rush them,” I suggest.
“We managed against Annie,” Victoria says, the panic entering into her voice now, “but against three of those bitches? I’m not so sure.”
The shadows of our pursuers fall dark across the wall opposite the alcove.
We have to act now or they’ll be on us.
“I’m not so sure, either,” I admit.
Victoria bites her bottom lip. I can see from her expression that she knows we have no choice about where to run to next. We turn together and face the steps. They’re shrouded in gloom, with just a tiny sliver
of light coming from the opening at the top of the stairs.
Scritch-scratch.
The sound comes from within the walls, and makes the hairs at the nape of my neck stand on end.
“Did you hear that?” Victoria asks.
“Yeah,” I reply.
“What the hell is that now?” she says, sounding as creeped out as I feel.
“It’s her,” I say, and Victoria’s sudden silence tells me that she knows who I’m talking about. “We have to move. Now, Victoria.”
We begin climbing, our footfalls echoing loudly in the confined space of the stairwell.
Scritch-scratch.
The stone steps beneath our feet are damp and slick. As we reach the halfway mark, I feel the next step crumble beneath my right foot and lose my balance. I stumble into Victoria and almost knock her over. She cries out, and we cleave to each other in the gloom for support.
“Sorry,” I say, “the damn step just crumbled away.”
Victoria takes a sharp intake of breath. “I don’t think it crumbled,” she says in a tense whisper. “It moved.”
“Moved?” I can’t quite get a handle on what she means, but then I look down and see it.
Scritch-scratch.
The bricks that form the steps are moving. Undulating, in the same way that soil moves when something is burrowing to the surface. And I know now that something is moving to the surface of the clock tower steps. Something cold. Something gray, and relentlessly malignant.
“Let’s go back?” Victoria says, panicking.
I glance back the way we came. I can see them, their white eyes in the darkness as they stumble and crawl up the steps after us.
“We can’t,” I say, hoping that Victoria won’t look back, but she does.
She screams, and the sharp sound in the claustrophobic confines of the stairwell is like a starter pistol that wills me to act against this new nightmare.
I grab her wrist and pull her with me as I push on up the stairs. Each one moves beneath my feet, willing me to fall and break my neck – and Victoria’s too.
Only three more steps to go now. I can see the light from the night sky bleeding out across the stone landing at the summit of the stairs.
Two more steps and I’ve broken into a run now. The less time my feet are on the steps, the better. I actually manage to use the insane movement of the bricks to my advantage. As I feel them move upward beneath my foot, I use that movement as a springboard to the next, and final, step.
“Last one!” I shout.
Victoria stumbles, but I dig in and just about manage to hold her upright, dragging her across the threshold and into the clock tower.
We fall, sprawling onto the cold stone floor. I unclasp my hand from Victoria’s wrist so that I can break my fall. She twists her body sideways to land beside me, the impact against the hard floor knocking the breath from her body in a last gasp. I feel a sharp stab of pain at my hip and I wonder why. I roll over onto my back and move my hand down to my pocket. The little music box is still there where I tucked it away earlier. No wonder it hurt when I fell; the thing is made of metal.
For a few moments there’s silence, save for our labored breathing. As we both catch our breath, I become aware of the wind that buffets the interior of the clock tower room as it blows through the open arched windows.
I clamber to my feet and help Victoria to hers. We both dust ourselves down, and Victoria inspects a raw-looking scrape on her knee. It looks sore. She must have caught it against the top step as she lost her footing. She spits on the fingertips of her right hand and rubs the spittle into the wound.
“Best antiseptic known to humankind,” she says after she realizes I’m watching her.
“Really?” I ask.
Victoria nods.
I have never heard this wisdom before. With all the bacteria swimming around in the human body, I find it difficult to believe that saliva isn’t going to achieve much else other than making her wound ten times worse. I’m about to say as much when I see a look of fresh terror on Victoria’s face.
The gray girl is with us in the clock tower.
She stands in one of the windowless alcoves, her tangled hair blowing forward over her face, teetering on the precipice. It’s just how I saw her in my dream, and I feel ever colder at the memory of it. Then I see the gray girl quiver slightly, and I realize that she’s sobbing.
I move through the wind, which whips at the ends of my hair, and Victoria reaches out to grab hold of my sleeve, intent on stopping me from taking another step.
“Emily! Don’t go near her! She’ll—”
Victoria’s voice falters. I look her in the eye and see pure fear embedded there.
“It’s okay,” I venture, wondering if I even sound convincing.
“Don’t—”
I pull away from Victoria and approach the gray girl.
As I walk slowly toward her, I retrieve the music box from my pocket and place it in the center of my palm. I hold it aloft so the girl can see it. It’s like a totem. An offering. I turn the handle slightly and the music box chimes. The gray girl’s entire body snaps to attention at the sound. She stops quivering, poised in the archway and as still as a statue.
“You don’t have to do it,” I tell her. “You don’t have to be angry anymore.”
I turn the handle slightly again, and the damaged little music box emits more chimes. The girl cocks her head to one side with all the animalistic curiosity of a bird of prey circling a scurrying morsel far below.
I clear my throat to speak again. And I try to focus on an image. The gray girl and the wall of the reformatory as one. The way she emerged from concrete and dust as a living, yet not living, thing. Her doomed birth’s only purpose to haunt us again and again.
“I think you’re trapped here,” I say, “for whatever reason, but you don’t have to be. We can all leave here together.”
I see a flash of something from behind her dark curtain of hair. Her eyes, twinkling in an echo of the exposed metal casing of the music box.
I keep moving toward her, peering at her and trying to discern any human expression in those eyes. The wind blows and parts her hair for just a second, and I see her eyes flash with a look of malevolence. And something else—
Recognition?
—and then she bares her stained teeth as her mouth forms a hateful snarl.
She leaps from the archway, right at me.
Victoria shrieks.
Still holding the music box out in front of me, I shield my eyes with my other hand. I hear her feet hit the stone floor. Hear her run the short distance it will take to attack me. The wind gusts around and into me, impossibly cold, and I wonder if it is the wind after all or her spectral force that chills me to my core. I feel her freezing hand swipe the music box from my hand. Hear it clatter to the floor. My face is blasted by a freezing tumult of wind that seems to pass right through me. I force my hand away from eyes, expecting to see her standing a hair’s breadth from my face—
But she’s gone.
Victoria stops shrieking.
I turn and see her crouching in unutterable horror on the floor. The gray girl stands over her, indomitable. The discarded music box rings out in one last discordant chime before falling silent. Pale hands emerge from the darkness and I see Saffy, Annie and Jess close in around Victoria. They latch on to her, their bony fingers digging deep. Annie laughs, a horrid guttural sound made all the more hideous by her twisted neck. Saffy drips fetid swimming pool water over Victoria as she entwines her fingers around her wrist. Jess grips the other in her blood-encrusted hands. Victoria screams, struggles and yells at them to let her go, to please stop, but they’re deaf to her pleas.
The gray girl nods at her undead foot soldiers and Saffy clamps a wet hand over Victoria’s mouth, turning her protests into a single, muffled cry
for help. Victoria claws at the air, desperate, and I realize that Saffy is suffocating her.
But it’s their ringleader who poses the worst threat.
Victoria’s eyes open wider as the gray girl looms over her and then swoops down. She clamps her hands on either side of Victoria’s head, an eerie hissing sound emanating from between her foul teeth.
Victoria’s legs kick out on the stone floor spasmodically.
Saffy’s face contorts into a hideous grin of cruel pleasure. Her hand drips wet over Victoria’s mouth. I hear a disgusting gurgle come from Victoria’s throat and I wonder if Saffy is somehow drowning her where she is being held, pinioned by four spiteful phantoms.
I have to help her.
“No,” I say. “Leave her alone.”
But I don’t think they can even hear me through the intensity of their single-minded hate. And even if they could, they would pay no heed to me.
But maybe Victoria can.
If she can hear me through her fear, she might fight back. I know I did when we fought side by side in the corridor.
“No!” I shout.
And I see Victoria writhing against them. She manages to move her head, first to one side, then the other. She wriggles some more and breaks free of Saffy’s grasp for just a second. Then Victoria bites down, hard, on Saffy’s hand—
(Atta girl!)
—and, even in that limbo state between life and death, Saffy can apparently feel pain because she howls and withdraws her hand. The gray girl snaps her head around, looking over her shoulder at me, that sharp twinkle in her eyes describing pure hatred. But Victoria’s brave fight is all for nothing. The gray girl’s hands are still clamped firmly on either side of Victoria’s head.
“Leave me, Emily. Run!” Victoria says.