by Karina Halle
As it was, I had gotten all of that, albeit a little shaky and peppered with our obscenities. But it was there. Despite how Rebecca saw things, it did feel good to actually capture something like that on film. It wasn’t proof by a long shot, but if it scared the shit out of Dex and I, it would scare viewers.
I looked up from the footage to see Dex staring at me impatiently.
“What?” I asked.
“Do you want to go in or not?”
Honestly, after seeing that ball go past, my answer was hell to the fucking no. But since Rebecca was so certain that everything was a set-up, a cruel part of me hoped we could prove her wrong. Besides, when you were with a skeptic, it made things a little less scary.
Well, in general. Probably not this time.
I took in a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves against the idea of going inside some long, closed up tunnel that some ghost child was playing ball in. “You lead the way,” I said. Then for good measure, I added, “Rebecca you can take the rear.”
I half expected to hear Dex make a joke about that, but he was so wrapped up in the moment that he didn’t even notice.
He pointed the flashlight into the tunnel and very carefully stepped down into it, me holding his upper arm for balance. Once he was in, he looked up at me. “It’s just about a foot or two lower than where you’re standing. It’s kind of slippery in places though, so watch your step. I’ve got you.”
Before I could say anything, he reached out and grabbed me around the waist. My weight was no match for his brute strength, and he picked me up and gently placed me in the tunnel so that my feet were on the step just below him.
“Thanks,” I said, never tiring from the feel of his strong hands around me. It definitely tried to take my mind off the current situation, but really, there was no getting around that I was now standing in a long-forgotten tunnel that was used to transport dead bodies. As Dex helped Rebecca climb in, I looked all around us. There wasn’t much to see except a few feet in front and back, as far as the light would reach. The stairs we were standing on were worn cement, splattered with dried stains that I hoped were dirt and rust. Beside the steps was a smooth incline for the stretchers to wheel on. The walls were cold and grey, and with a strange bit of relief I could see the remnants of a graffiti tag where someone must have left their mark back when the place was abandoned. If the vandals could brave it, so could I.
As Rebecca shined her light around, it seemed like the tunnel went on forever in both directions. “Should I prop the door open with something?” She looked genuinely concerned which threw me off for a moment, until I remembered her claims of claustrophobia.
Dex gently took the camera from my hand and the light from Rebecca. He eyed the door with consideration. “It’s heavy and has traction on the floor, see?” He gestured to the bottom of the floor in the hallway where the door scraped along. “There’s no draft in here either. We should be okay.” He slid his eyes to me, giving me a silent chance to back out.
“Well, let’s go,” I said. “We don’t have all night.”
He nodded and aimed the camera in front of him. “I’m assuming the tunnel runs diagonally along the length of the building. The very top probably lets out above the far corner of the west wing.”
I felt the darkness sitting on either side of us, the coldness of the tunnel seeping into my clothes. I quickly jabbed Dex in the back. “Hey, we’ll worry about that later. Let’s just get to the second floor.” It never left my mind for one second that the ball had rolled somewhere behind us, at the end of the chute, and there was no telling if the ghost that kicked it there had gone after it or not.
In other words, I didn’t know what was worse—the void in front of us or the black emptiness behind us.
Thank god I was sandwiched between the two of them as we very carefully made our way up the passageway. I felt all my senses on fire as we went, my eyes happy to be watching my feet instead of the unknown that lay in front of Dex and his camera. The only sounds were our footsteps that echoed faintly from the closed-in walls and the raggedness of our breaths.
“Everyone holding up back there?” Dex whispered. As if he couldn’t feel me hanging onto the back of his jacket like a little kid.
“Uh huh,” I managed to say, my mouth dry.
We waited to hear Rebecca’s response but she didn’t say anything, though I could feel her breath and presence at my back.
“Feeling claustrophobic yet?” I prodded her for an answer. When she still didn’t say anything, I dared to look behind me.
Despite feeling her breath a second ago, I could barely see her. She’d stopped in the middle of the tunnel, about ten feet away, her figure backlit faintly from the residual light of the hallway.
“R-rebecca?” I asked, my voice shaking. I stopped and pulled Dex back. He immediately shined his light on her.
“Are you all right?” Dex asked. “Why are you being creepy?”
“Shhh,” she said softly. “I’m listening.”
“To what?” I whispered as goosebumps prickled my arms.
She didn’t say anything but remained absolutely still. I could hear my own heart thudding in my chest, Dex’s breathing, the whir of the camera as it tried to focus.
I was about to ask again what on earth we were listening for when I finally heard it.
It was a few notes of music. But more specific than that, a xylophone, like the kind I used to play around with as a child. I held in a gasp as my brain tried to recognize the faint melody in it. The notes would come and go, as if being swept away by an imaginary breeze, so the song never felt fully formed.
“Ring around the rosy,” Dex said in a low voice. I turned to look at him, wincing at the light he was holding in his other hand. “Listen.”
He was right. I could pick out the tune, and once I did, I got pummeled with that get the fuck out of here feeling. We’d made it about fifteen feet into the tunnel and I’d already had enough.
Of course, I didn’t tell them that. I could feel Dex watching me closely.
“Let’s keep going,” I said quickly. I looked over to Rebecca who slowly nodded. I could see the music was intriguing her and that her rational mind was trying to attribute it to something logical. I wished she could pass some of that logic on to me because her mind seemed like a safer place to be.
We resumed walking, and as we did, the tune began to fade until we were left again with the sound of our own breathing and blood pumping within us.
“Okay,” Dex said slowly, coming to a stop. He shined the light forward, illuminating nothing but the never ending tunnel as its greying walls disappeared into the black. I was terrified of the darkness that lay ahead, getting that same peculiar feeling I’d gotten earlier in the day when I stared up at the building. Seeing nothing, but feeling—knowing—that something was hidden in front of your eyes and watching you.
He looked over my head at Rebecca. “Do we want to try communicating in here or on the second floor?”
“Communicating?” I repeated, my skin dancing with raw nerves. “In here? No way. Not tonight. We should do that after the tour tomorrow so we know what the hell we’re dealing with.”
“There’s obviously something in this tunnel with us,” he said, his voice an octave lower. “Don’t you feel it?”
At that, a loud, gritty scraping sound rushed up from behind us. Dex immediately shined the light down the chute, illuminating the door to the first floor.
It was closing on us. Slowly.
As if someone on the other side was pushing it shut.
“Oh god,” I gasped as the door closed with a groan, sealing us inside the tunnel.
CHAPTER EIGHT
With the door closing with such heavy finality, Rebecca suddenly sprang into action. She started walking down the stairs as quickly as she could until Dex and I had to run after her in order to keep illuminating her way.
“Rebecca!” I called out as we caught up to her. She was frantically running her hands
along the walls, looking for the outline of the door. As on the other side, there was no door handle or anything to indicate it was a door at all.
“Here,” Dex said, handing me the light and the camera. He told me to shine it on the wall dead ahead and he started running his hands over it. When he found a groove in the cement, he shoved his shoulder against it and the door budged open a crack. We expected the light from the first floor hallway to come seeping in, but everything was dark. Terribly dark. The timer must have turned the lights off.
“I’m getting out,” Rebecca said as Dex pushed his palms flat against the door and got it fully open. Though Dex made it look easy, I could tell how heavy the door was. Just how the hell did it close on us?
“Getting scared?” Dex asked.
Rebecca gave him a sharp look before he helped her step up and into the hallway. “Scared? If you think I’m going to chance getting trapped in that bloody tunnel again, you’ve got another thing coming.” She stood a foot above us, wiping her hands on her capri pants. “Now, are you two still going to go for the second floor or do you want to save that for some other time?”
Dex shrugged, far too cavalier considering what had just happened. I mean, once again, hello, how the hell did that door close?
“Aren’t you concerned about the fact that someone pushed the door shut?” I asked her, suppressing a shudder as I said it. “Someone that’s probably on the first floor.”
She gathered her cardigan around her and quickly smoothed her hair behind her ears. “It was probably the wind.” I exchanged a look with Dex that said “what wind?” but we let it go.
“Well, kiddo,”Dex said, taking the camera from me and putting his hand in mine. He gave it a hard, comforting squeeze. “Do you want to pack it up and try again tomorrow, or do you want to see what’s on the second floor?”
I want to go back home to Fat Rabbit and laze around on the couch drinking wine and watching Netflix, I thought. I don’t want to be standing in a death chute, heading to the second floor with one person less than we started with.
Time for me to put on my brave face. “Can we do, like twenty minutes? When the time’s up, we head back?”
“We can do anything you want, baby,” he said, taking a step closer until he was pressed up against me. Even in the dim light I could see the warmth in his eyes, his desire to protect me above everything else. “You know that.” He bent down and kissed me softly.
Rebecca cleared her throat. “All right then, I’ll leave you two be.” We broke apart in time to see her take out her iPhone. “I’ve sent my alarm for twenty-two minutes from now, two minutes extra because I assume you might want to have a quickie in the death tunnel there. I’ll give you a call then, sound good?”
“Production manager of the year,” Dex said, raising his hand in a false toast. “Can you prop the door open this time, just in case?”
She smiled as if it was her idea in the first place. “I’m already on it. See you in a few.”
Then she walked off down the dark hall, happier to be by herself than with us. I took in a deep breath and looked at Dex. He was giving me the eye and I could tell he had an erection from the way he was pressing it firmly against my hip.
“Don’t even think about a quickie,” I warned him with a sharp shake of my head. “I couldn’t come in this place even if you had two dicks.”
He grinned. “That sounds like a challenge. You know that can be arranged.” Considering he packed a fucking dildo to New Orleans, I wouldn’t have been surprised. But I just punched him in the chest. Actually, I was glad for the topic and our fun banter. It was easier to forget where we were and what we were doing.
“Time is running out,” I reminded him.
He bit his lip and let his eyes rake over me. “Have I ever told you how hot you look when you’re scared out of your mind?”
“You’re an ass.”
“You love it.”
“I love you, stupid. Ass or not. Now either we go to the damn floor or we’re going after Rebecca and I’m going to bed and pretending I never came in here.”
Dex made a slight bow, gesturing up the passageway. “After you.” Since I was frozen to the spot, he put his hand on my shoulder and gently turned me around so that I was facing in the right direction. “Unless you want to be behind me.”
No way. I steadied the light and walked forward determinedly, finding it easier to find my footing on the steps this time around. They were long, so they had that spacing where you could walk a stride on one step until you stepped on the next. Now that I was in front, I kept my eyes focused dead ahead, at the approaching nothingness beyond the light.
My eyes wanted to see shapes, shadowy human figures that flattened against the walls. In fact, I could almost see them; they were almost real, but they had to be tricks of the eye with the light provided. Scratch that—I wanted them to be a trick, you just never really knew with me.
Dex suddenly stopped, and I let my eyes focus on the shadows for just a moment longer, trying to stay absolutely still and fix my vision so that I’d notice any movement.
One of the shadows came off the wall.
“Found it!” Dex exclaimed in a ragged hush.
I put my hand on my chest, nearly letting out a yelp, and looked over at him. He was running his hands down the wall, obviously needing more light. Before I could give it to him though, I stole one last glance at the tunnel. The shadows were still there, but they were static—nothing more than the absence of light.
I steadied my nerves and put the light on the wall where Dex started pushing, ever so conscious of the darkness behind me, just nipping at my heels, an imaginary finger at my shoulder blades. My heart was thumping so loud within my head that it sounded like shitty dubstep.
With a grunt, he pushed in as hard as he could and the cement started to give way, a plume of dust rising up from the cracks and disappearing in the tunnel.
He poked his head into the void, staying silent. I watched his back rise and fall as he breathed. I was about to ask him what was wrong, but before I could he pulled his head back and looked at me with an excited grin. “So this is the second floor. You want to go first or should I?”
“You go,” I said. I’d rather be left behind in a tunnel that I had a feel for than to step into the unknown darkness of another level. Though we saw the bouncing ball go off into oblivion, the tinkling of “Ring Around the Rosy,” and a door closing on us, things could have been worse. For all the death that passed through the tunnel, it could have been a lot worse.
“Hold this,” he said, putting the camera in my other hand. While I held the light steady with the other, I filmed him as he grabbed the edge of the door and hauled himself up. As it was with the first floor, the angle of the tunnel slicing upward meant it wasn’t quite level with the floor of the hallway and was about a foot below it.
“Wow,” I heard him slowly breathe out as he got to his feet. Whenever Dex said wow, it was either something awesome or horrible. I assumed it wasn’t going to be awesome.
“What?”
“It just…” He trailed off. With the shadowy light illuminating the bottom of his face, I watched him stare at nothing. “It feels so different. Come up here.”
I breathed in deeply, wishing for that extra shot of courage. It didn’t come. I forced it. Dex held out his hand for the camcorder, and after I gave it to him, I let him help me up.
Once I was standing in the hallway of the second floor, I realized how right he was. Though we could only see a few feet in front of us from the light, that few feet was enough. In fact, it wasn’t what we saw that made a difference.
It was just a hallway, fairly clean though covered with a layer of grit and dust. Beyond the glow, you could see rooms stretching out on either side, some doors still intact, others gone. Patients’ rooms, empty skeletons in the darkness.
But aside from that, it was the feeling that got you. It held your chest, like a cold dark hand reaching in. While the whole buildin
g had given me the creeps so far, this was the part that told you that you were no longer safe. You were no longer at home.
“This ain’t Kansas anymore,” I murmured out loud, my breath visibly rising up into the air. It was cold, much colder than the tunnel.
Dex turned to look down at me and handed me back the light before putting his hand at my waist. “It’s something, right?” he asked. “Even if I brought Rebecca up here, she’d have to say that things weren’t right. The alignment is off. I wouldn’t be surprised if the toilets ran backward.” He looked away, surveying down the darkened hall as far as the eye could see. “It’s just all wrong.”
I could only nod. There was no other way to describe it.
We stood there for a long moment, perhaps thinking about the next steps. I know I was thinking about the blackness around me. I was thinking about the tunnel, about everything in there. I was thinking about what lay around us, the unknown. Sometimes I wished we didn’t have to put ourselves through so much inner turmoil to just get a show.
“Perry,” Dex said, looking at me over his shoulder with a furrowed brow. “Are you with me?”
“I’m here,” I said. I lifted the light so it was illuminating everything in front of us in a ten-foot radius. “Let’s see what we can do.”
He nodded, and after I shined the light down the hall both ways, he decided to head toward the east wing, toward the section that would be right above the administration offices. I supposed it was easier to stick with what we knew, and knowing Rebecca was directly below us would give us some comfort.
I walked to the side of Dex and just ahead enough to be captured on camera, taking in careful, frozen breaths. I spoke in a voice just above a whisper, enunciating properly so it would be picked up by the mic. It was my on-camera voice.
“We’re now on the second floor of the Sea Crest Sanatorium,” I said, “after coming up the so-called ‘Death Chute’ where they used to take the deceased.” I paused, knowing Dex would cut in with shots of the tunnel. “While we didn’t see any ghosts, we observed a bouncing ball, thrown down the passageway by an unknown entity. We also heard music that sounded like Ring around the Rosy.”