Change Of Season

by Dillon, A. C.

  “Um, does anyone have a way to Google up something for me?” she asked shyly.

  “I have my MacBook,” Meg chimed in.

  “Great! Could you look up the on-stage seating chart from the Broadway show? I know there’s a super detailed one out there,” Autumn added, sketching the stage onto a new page.

  “Whatcha thinkin’?” Veronica asked.

  “A middle ground, maybe,” Autumn replied vaguely.

  “Got it!”

  Autumn rose, huddling over beside Meg. “Okay, awesome… one sec…” With a few lines, she corrected her own guessed chart and returned to her seat. “Yes. Okay, this is an idea: the official stage seating Broadway used – and if you’ve seen their stage, it wasn’t much bigger than ours – has 44 seats totals on stage. Eighteen of those are cast or swing seating – necessary for the scenes where few characters are on stage. Twenty-six, if I’m counting right, were sold to audiences.”

  Lucas scribbled something down, then waved at Autumn. “Keep going.”

  Autumn nodded, surveying her sketches. “So for those of us who’ve seen this show live, especially from stage, having an empty set of chairs would look visually off. That’s exactly why the original production designed the on-stage seats: to mask the empty chairs during ensemble numbers like ‘I Believe’. Now, they had like six or eight bodies between the orchestra and empty chairs, which for us is excessive. You’d have to play around with the sketching, but what if you cut the seats from 44 to say 26 total, and used your audience plant swings as part of the chair cover? You’d have eight more chairs to fill, which could be for family or friends or others in the program?”

  “It could work!” Matt exclaimed.

  “Especially if we cut from three rows each side to two,” Veronica added knowingly.

  “Lucas?”

  With a huge sigh, Lucas nodded vigourously. “Yes, I like it! Could we maybe test drive with some chairs right now on stage?”

  Several of the students rose, heading backstage to a storage room. Not wanting to seem lazy, Autumn quickly threw down her things and joined Veronica in yanking chairs out onto the main stage. Taking a third chair from Shantelle, movement in the periphery sent her turning wildly to the right, eyes narrowing in the dim lighting.

  A shadow slipped through a metal door on the right – the sealed door.

  Shaking her head to clear it, she passed the chair along to Veronica then headed further backstage. Drawing closer, she remembered the door from her exploration with Miraj: it had been locked from the backstage side that night. It can’t be… Distracted, she stumbled into Matt, who wavered and apologized immediately.

  “Oh no worries, I think I drifted off. What’s through this door?” she asked as casually as possible. “I thought it was the bathroom, but it’s locked.” Please let it be locked… or better: unlocked and in use by someone living right now?

  “Oh that leads to the service tunnels,” he replied, handing his chair off to a waiting Lucas. “There’s tons of them beneath the older campus buildings, although they’re seldom used now.”

  “Really?” Autumn followed him back to the storage closet, hefting a chair of her own this time. “Why don’t they use them now? Too many student make-outs?”

  Matt laughed. “Nah, they’ve always been closed to students. They were used before Casteel took over the property. Haven’t you heard the history?”

  “History?”

  They handed their chairs off, strolling back down the dim corridor. “Oh this place is full of it! Before Casteel existed, this used to be an asylum.”

  Autumn halted in her tracks. “Wait, what?”

  Matt shrugged. “Yup, it’s true. You can check online. There’s rumours the place is haunted by patients who died here, but I’ve never seen anything myself. I think Lucas saw something once, though.”

  “Haunted? Lovely,” Autumn murmured. Is he seriously telling me that Nikki isn’t the only ghost around?

  “Hey, don’t worry!” Matt soothed her. “Besides, ghosts are usually lucky for theatres. They add character.”

  Or dead girls’ barrettes, Autumn thought miserably.

  “Hey! Just a few more guys!” Lucas called from the stage.

  Autumn forced herself to soldier on in spite of her returning headache. Suicidal students crying in the dorms and asylum patients who linger decades later. If someone tells me this land’s a First Nations burial ground, I am out of here. She’d seen this horror movie before, and she had no interest in being sucked into a TV or mirrors, or possessed by a bitter ghost.

  “Okay!” Lucas shouted happily as she and Matt returned with another set of chairs. “Let’s try this out. Matt, Greg, you two sort those over there…”

  Skin prickling, Autumn settled back into her seat, watching chairs slide and screech across the stage as directions were shouted back and forth. She pressed her fingers gingerly into her temples, massaging them as she mulled this latest tidbit. An asylum… Didn’t Veronica say that no one understood why Nikki suddenly killed herself? What if she didn’t want to? A knot coiled in her stomach, taut and tangled, and her knees drew up into her chest.

  It was time for more research.

  ***

  Twizzlers: the dinner of champions. Gnawing on yet another strawberry strand, Autumn’s fingers flews along the keys, creating yet another search string in Google.

  Asylum+closed+Oakville+Ontario… and go!

  Finally, a hit that seemed on topic: an archived list of haunted places, explored by a local amateur paranormal society. Clicking through the menus, she found six listings for the Oakville area – a couple of houses, a restaurant, a medical facility… and there it was: Casteel Preparatory Academy. Yanking another piece of licorice from the plastic bag beside her, she clicked through.

  “Casteel Preparatory Academy… Formerly Bronte-Appleby Regional Mental Hospital. Bingo!”

  Skimming the profile page, the information was vague, but useful: until 1959, the grounds had housed a mental hospital, serving the surrounding towns and cities. It was closed due to lack of funding and clientele, with remaining patients transferred to the Centre For Addictions and Mental Health in Toronto, or CAMH. The facilities had housed three dormitories for patients, segregated by gender, along with a recreation centre and gymnasium, cafeteria, and administrative buildings. Staff also lived on site.

  In detailing their investigation, the paranormal society noted that there were no controversial incidents in the hospital’s history – at least, none they could find. Asylums being asylums, patients died in care, via suicide, old age or degenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s, but there were no murders or ritualistic abuses by crazed doctors. House On Haunted Hill, this was not. Breathing a sigh of relief, Autumn chugged her Diet Coke and clicked through to the investigation results.

  Apparently, this had been done without the permission of Casteel staff – they noted being thrown off the property and barred before being able to complete a full examination of the grounds. What they were able to ascertain, Autumn found unnerving: service tunnels, through which the asylum staff transported equipment and patients, ran beneath all of the older buildings, and students and staff alike reported seeing and hearing unexplainable things within them, including sobbing. Students also had commented on feeling watched by an invisible presence, particularly in Pearson, the residence for the junior female students. Ashbury, to her relief, was a relatively new building, but neighbouring dorm Trudeau was linked to the tunnels.

  Several video files were available on the site, along with an audio recording from within a tunnel during an overnight surveillance. The mouse arrow hovered over the first video, labelled as containing an “unknown visual”, her finger shaking above the trackpad.

  Your turn.

  The phantom message on her computer taunted her. Should she watch it? Maybe it would provide answers, maybe it was staged. Maybe it would only aggravate her insomnia further. Grumbling to herself, she bookmarked the page, shutting down her brow
ser.

  “Not today,” she whispered. “Not alone.”

  Sleep was impossible. The gears were grinding inside, wisps of thought and memory connecting in feverish fashion. Veronica had an early rehearsal the next morning. She couldn’t rouse her for distraction.

  The tunnels.

  Stretched out upon her bed, Autumn contemplated the facts as she understood them. Tunnels ran beneath a good two thirds of the campus, a maze for student rats, and possibly eerie specters that lingered in the dank corridors. Melancholy mental ghosts sobbed on the regular, if one believed the reports. The theatre was haunted, too, according to the Drama crowd. Her room was the site of an unexpected suicide of a doppelganger teen, whose hair barrette and burnt postcard to a mystery girl had somehow found their way into her possession.

  Oh yes, and Autumn herself was as mad as the hatters of Bronte-Appleby Regional Mental Hospital.

  “Curiouser and curiouser, indeed,” she mumbled, rolling and rising to her feet. “Down the rabbit hole, then.”

  Yanking her hair into a messy knot at the nape of her neck, she slid into her worn black hoodie and grabbed her cell phone and flashlight. If nothing else, walking the tunnels would burn the restless energy coursing her caffeinated veins. Besides, what would Miraj do?

  She’d see just how far the tunnels went, Autumn knew. Of course, she’d seek that knowledge to exploit it for partying or pranks, but motive was irrelevant.

  A waxing moon overhead lit the campus just enough that Autumn was able to cut through the trees and dart around buildings with ease, shadows clinging to her frame. The air was warm for October – thank you, global warming – and the grassy earth yielded softly beneath her sneakers. The residences were dark, save the tell-tale glow of a TV or computer in a few rooms, all of the obedient children were nestled in their beds, oblivious to the history beneath their sweetly dreaming bodies. With a jerk, she opened her side door to the theatre, descending quickly to the dusty cement.

  Her light on, she shone it each way, biting her lip as she debated strategy. Each core tunnel extended beyond the reach of the jaundiced beam. Exploring the entirety of the networked paths would be impossible tonight. Which way?

  Evil goes left. So, right then.

  The first thirty feet were well-worn terrain, her shoes treading over her own footprints as she moved towards her illicit access door into the Media Studies building. Even the spider webs lent a soothing familiarity to the walk, her head instinctively dodging and shifting to miss them. It was only when she’d passed her rusted door that Autumn’s heart began to race, the adrenaline surging as she ventured into uncharted territory. In her head, she roughly calculated buildings within proximity that she might pass beneath: Administration lay far to the left; Academics II and Pearson – the purportedly haunted residence – lay diagonally to the right.

  Sneaking into Admin might be amusing, Autumn thought with a grin. Pearson was out of the question – at least, solo. No rights, then. A part of her felt disappointed at the fact that this time, evil seemed to be looming right, not left.

  Silly superstitions. Wasn’t this the “magical thinking” that her first shrink loved to ask about?

  “Fuck him,” she muttered, pressing forward cautiously.

  The tunnel continued straight for some distance, with not a door marring the cold walls. Instinctively, she understood that she no longer lay beneath Media Studies. Mulch lingered in the creases where floor met wall, and Autumn took care not to step in the murky puddles dotting the cement. Smelling like a sewer wasn’t high on her list of priorities.

  The tunnel branched, her only options left and right. With a quick glance down the forbidden direction, she moved left, her desire to break into Logan’s office buoying her through the growing unease that weighed her limbs down. Turn back, her brain insisted, but she disregarded it, drawn like a moth to a flickering bulb just ahead. Squinting her eyes, her gaze locked on a heap of clothing beneath it. Ew, I really hope no one has sex here. It’s filthy! The tunnels branched anew perhaps twenty feet ahead, and Autumn’s heart sank. This place really is a maze. The kind you need a map for. Mentally, she sketched out her course, again ascertaining where Pearson was in hopes of avoiding it; luckily, the universe sent her a sign – literally.

  The plaque was worn, embossing long faded, but Autumn was able to make out all that she needed to know: Operating Theatre, it said, a tiny arrow to the right.

  “Um, no. Left.” No way in hell did she dare chance an encounter with a spirit that died on a table. She had enough issues with the one that died in room 308.

  Not a single light remained in working order in this juncture, leaving Autumn at the mercy of the powerful but narrow beam of her Maglite. It made dodging puddles and insects far more treacherous, and her gait slowed, each step picked out carefully. Steam hissed from the pipes overhead, serpentine billows of condensation escaping the surface. The smell bothered her most: rotten apples and manure, as best she could describe it.

  “Please tell me I’m not stumbling into a septic tank,” she whispered to herself, focusing on breathing through her mouth.

  Several doors dotted this stretch – an electrical room, clearly marked with a foreboding High Voltage sign; a storage room that was locked, to Autumn’s disappointment; and a final door on her right, unmarked and, as a turn of the knob revealed, unlocked. But where did it go to?

  Scrape-thump.

  Autumn’s heart stopped, vision whirling away as it met her ears. A shuffling, slow walk. Distant, but palpable all the same. I’m not alone. Clicking off her flashlight, she pressed her back to the door she’d been contemplating, ears straining.

  Scrape. Scrape-thump.

  What to do? How the hell could she explain being down here? Oh, gee, I was trying to find a bathroom and somehow ended up here! Silly me! A more chilling thought crossed her mind as the steps drew closer.

  Can ghosts make walking sounds?

  Autumn didn’t care to find out. Hadn’t that site posted a video of a presence? What if this was that presence?

  A whistle, low and sinister, sounded down the tunnel. Her tunnel. There was only one thing to do.

  Throwing open the door behind her, Autumn darted inside, and began to run.

  The mystery door, as she learned, let to another tunnel, from which several doors branched off – more storage? Dead body lockers? No time to ponder it now, as the distant steps increased in their pace. Slamming through the door on the opposite end – mercifully unlocked – Autumn found herself forced left down a dimly lit tunnel. Clicking her light on hurriedly, she scanned the walls, finding a single door to her right. With a desperate huff, she threw it open and continued running, even as the steps grew dramatically closer and quicker.

  Oh, shit! I’ve doubled back towards – whoever!

  And she had – she knew these tunnels now. She was beneath Media Studies again, down one of the many crazy branches she and Miraj had found that first night. But where was the stage? There were no doors here!

  The second branch, she remembered. This must be the first!

  A coughing nearby sent her careening around the corner to the right, only to meet with a dead end just ahead. No! Autumn realized, sickened, that she was utterly lost and at the mercy of her pursuer. Unless that door -

  To her right, she jerked the knob, the door opening to a stairwell upward. Chest heaving she ran up the eight steps, nearly tumbling forward on the last as she jerked at the handle leading to potential freedom.

  Locked. It wouldn’t move.

  “No, no, no…” Autumn whimpered, shoving and twisting at the handle. Something moved within the mechanism, but it refused to budge. Maybe it was only stuck? Throwing her shoulder into the door, she twisted the silver knob. The metal shifted in its frame, yielding slightly. Hope renewed, she shoved again, her shoulder aching as it collided with the door. Another inch of yield.

  Scrape-thump-thump. Panting. Fifty feet off, at most.

  With a deep breath and a prayer
to a God she stopped believing in a long time ago, Autumn threw her entire body into the door – and hit the ground as it sprung open, cracking her shins painfully against the floor. Wincing in agony, she scrambled to her feet, relieved.

  Backstage. That was the door I saw Nikki walk through, she realized nervously, stumbling to her right. Should she thank the ghost if she made it out of this? Was it an omen?

  Breathless and frantic, Autumn didn’t see him until his arms ensnared her, a hand pressed firmly over her mouth as she slammed into his chest.

  “Don’t move,” he hissed.

  193

  Change Of Season

  ELEVEN

  Oakville; October 7th, 2011. 11:37 p.m.

  Autumn’s head spun as she struggled against her captor, fists striking at his hips, torso, anything in reach as he dragged her around a corner. He always said he would find me, she thought bitterly, choking on a sob. And he did! He’s going to finish it. He muttered for her to be quiet and she silently cursed him, wished him dead.

  That is, until he spun her around, hand still pressed to her mouth.

  “You’re going to get us both busted! Quiet!”

  His hand fell from her lips and Autumn inhaled a shaky breath. It was the guy. The Film Guy. How was this even possible? Was he stalking her too?

  “You…What-?”

  “Shh!” he urged, gesturing for her to follow. “It’s gotta be someone on staff. We need to get back to the dorms fast.”

  Autumn followed him as he cut around a corner, beyond the storage room and down a small stairwell that spilled into what she recognized to be the rear of the building, where students came and went after hours. Security usually lingered here, but the guard had apparently wandered off to patrol, or maybe nap on the couched upstairs. His leather jacket shimmered in the moonlight cast from the picture windows as he gestured towards a nearby stairwell.

  “What’s your dorm?” he whispered.

  “Um, Ashbury,” she admitted. “What-”