Eternal Maze

by Alexie Aaron

  Murphy waited patiently for Mia. He sat on the ledge of the window she entered. He sensed the entity that came in and sat with its back to the window. He wondered if the entity sensed him. Mia was wise to take on the shape of the mouse. When you were small you were rarely noticed.

  Mia moved through two more rooms. There was a bed in one and a slops bucket in another. This confirmed that there was a human involved. She had moved along and through the closet and in and out of pockets of the clothing, but she didn’t find any identification. The only thing she learned was the man had to be over six feet tall and his shoe size was an eleven.

  She entered the hall and saw a distortion in light. Another entity moved down the hallway. He had dark features and a slicked back hairstyle. He too wore a white orderly’s uniform. He stopped and bent down and stared at Mia. Mia wrinkled her nose and shot past him before he could try and grab her. She ran a few yards from him before stopping. He didn’t make chase. Maybe mice were an everyday occurrence in the dilapidated building.

  Another moved along the hallway. Mia scurried to the shadows and watched as a large, muscular man plodded his way from the shadows past her and stopped to address the orderly.

  “How is mother today, DeMarco?” His voice was low and scratchy as if it wasn’t used much. His clothes were expensive but worn, his shoes discolored from weather.

  The entity smiled and answered him. “She was very pleased to see you earlier. She is anxious to see what you have brought to amuse her tonight.”

  “She didn’t like the last one,” the man complained. “Said she cried too much.”

  “You have to be patient, Karl. Your mother is feeling her age and doesn’t want to nurture anymore. She wants to be entertained.”

  Mia watched the two men move into the kitchen. She moved as fast as she could, OOBing at full speed. She finished the fourth floor and was disappointed to not find the girls. She made her way back to the kitchen and looked around the corner and moved into the shadows.

  The man was opening a package of red ribbon.

  “Karl, there are police and others in the building,”DeMarco warned him.

  The man looked up, interested. “Maybe they will find mother’s dogs.”

  “They did.”

  “Are they going to return them?”

  “No, they took them away.”

  “That is a shame, mother liked the little one.”

  “It was her favorite,” agreed the orderly. “When are you going to bring her the girls?”

  “I have to iron their dresses. Find them some shoes. The little one lost her shoe and sock. When I have everything, I will go down and get them. They are afraid of the dark so I left them a few glow sticks.”

  “That must have made them smile.”

  “No. But the littlest one said thank you.”

  “Such good manners. Unusual in this day and age.”

  Karl nodded. He had a wistful look on his face.

  “I saw a little mouse in the hall earlier,” the orderly told him.

  Karl looked interested. “Really, was it a white mouse?”

  “No, a brown field mouse.”

  “Too bad, mother likes little white mice. You’ll have to kill it before she sees it,” Karl ordered.

  Mia backed deeper into the shadows.

  “Take a piece of ribbon.” Karl cut a length of the ribbon and formed a loop. “Make a knot in it.” he pulled through the length. “Like this.” He showed the orderly the ribbon. “Put the little head into it.” Karl took a carrot from the bowl on the table and placed the ribbon around it. “And then pull!” He jerked both hands and the top of the garroted carrot flew up and fell to the floor in a clatter. The bottom fell on the table and rolled until it too fell to the floor. The large piece rolled near Mia’s hiding place. She bilocated through the wall and took off down the hall and into the room. She moved with such speed that the entity at the window didn’t realize that she had moved past him. She pushed through the shade and morphed into a bat. She wasn’t surprised to find Murphy sitting there. She took off flying, gliding down around the building and into the command truck.

  Mia jumped up. “Ted!”

  He was with her immediately.

  “Don’t bother with the upstairs. The girls are in the cellar. I don’t know where, but they aren’t upstairs. We have to move quickly. They’re in danger.” She quickly told him what she had learned. All the time she was shaking her legs to bring the feeling back.

  Ted called for a meeting in the truck. Mia asked Murphy to watch for the two orderlies. Once John, Burt and Tom had climbed into the truck, Ted sealed the break with the dolomite. Mia explained what she learned, and they made a plan. They had learned from the blueprints that there was only one level to the cellar, but it extended past the building’s foundations. They would need all the people they could muster if they were going to get to the girls in time.

  Chapter Eight

  Mia sought out Beth who was typing furiously on her laptop in the front seat of the PEEPs equipment van. She gently tapped on the window so as to not awaken Whit who was sleeping in the backseat. Beth, focused on her research, jumped at the sound of Mia’s knock. Beth rolled down the window.

  “How is he?” Mia asked.

  “In shock I guess. Not happy with you at the moment.”

  “I don’t understand, but I guess life’s not fair.”

  “How are you? You seem to have rebounded alright,” Beth observed.

  “I’ve filed it away until I can deal with it. There are two scared little girls in jeopardy somewhere in the basement of that building. We are going in, but I would like to share information with you. Also, I need to extract Whit’s phone from his pocket.”

  Beth sighed. “Are there no boundaries you won’t violate?” She clicked the locks open.

  Mia opened the side door and climbed in. She hovered over Whit until she spied his iPhone buttoned in his top pocket. Barely breathing, she unbuttoned the pocket and with delicate movements inched the phone out of the pocket. She stopped a moment, kissed him on the forehead and said softly, “I’m sorry, Whit,” before leaving the van. She motioned for Beth to follow her.

  She waited for Beth to catch up before knocking on the truck’s sliding door. Ted raised the door and gave each woman a hand up.

  The small space was wall to wall men. Tom reached his hand out and said, “Do you have the phone?”

  Mia handed it to him.

  He clicked through the pictures until he found what he was looking for. He sent them to the PEEPs email account. Ted pulled them up on the monitor.

  “Whit and I found this scratched on the desk. It was covered by an old calendar blotter, I believe 1986? Sometime in the eighties,” he said dismissively. “And as you can see, the same hand has decorated the walls. These were covered by prints and diplomas.”

  Beth turned, looked at Mia and whispered, “This is why you wanted his phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you were going through his stuff while he was… Oh never mind.”

  “We need to talk. Later, after we find the girls and get the fuck away from here,” Mia hissed.

  Beth winced.

  “Earth to Mia?” Ted said gently.

  “Oh sorry, fuzzed out. Did you ask me something?”

  “Tell the group what you found on the fourth floor.”

  “Again?”

  “Beth and Mike weren’t here.”

  “Oh, sorry. There is a carefully preserved corpse of a woman sitting up in an elaborate setting. She is surrounded by dolls, all with red ribbons on their necks. There are two entities dressed in white orderly’s uniforms. I only heard one of them talk. They are big brutes, the kind you would expect to find in a hospital for the criminally insane. There’s a human about six foot and change. He was called Karl by one of the orderlies that he addressed as DeMarco. The woman in the bed is referred to as Karl’s mother. Evidently, the dogs, Melanie, and probably others are brought to his mother f
or her entertainment.”

  Beth shuddered.

  “I overhead Karl saying to DeMarco that, after he irons some sort of clothing for the girls, he’s going to present them to the old lady. If she doesn’t like them he will kill them. Much like he tried with Melanie, he intends to strangle them with the ribbon. He has them somewhere in the basement. Oh, and the girls have glow sticks as their only source of light.” Mia stopped a moment, working something out on her fingers and looked over at Ted. “Is that all I told you?”

  “Yes,” Ted said.

  John cleared his throat and asked, “Miss Bouvier, did you find out anything we can use?”

  “Beth, call me Beth. I have information on when the hospital was closed, a few rumors about the fourth floor, and I read the memoir of someone who was released around the same time. From what I can gather, there were three areas of the hospital, very separate, for good reason. The second floor was for patients that checked themselves in, mostly for drug and alcohol rehab, but a few cases of what they collectively called nervous exhaustion. The third floor had mild cases of patients that had been sent there by court mandate. I won’t list the ailments. I think we all have an idea there. Now the fourth floor was under lock and key. This is where the criminally insane were kept. Violent people deemed by the court to be insane and too dangerous to be amongst the normal population. They primarily came from wealthy backgrounds. The families paid for them to be kept out of the prisons and state run asylums. The writer also remembers that for a fee, family members could visit the fourth floor patients.”

  “Sounds like a country club for the cuckoos,” Mike quipped.

  “Did you find anything that would explain the pair of orderlies?” Mia asked.

  “I didn’t know about them until now. I’ll go over my notes and check the local papers for any instances of deaths of workers reported here,” Beth promised.

  “I think the she is quite possibly the woman upstairs. Now why was her body left up there when the hospital closed? Or why it was brought there by what appears to be her son? Mia, did you get a good enough look at him to be able to judge his age?” Sheriff Ryan asked.

  “Man, I’m horrible at judging age. In his fifties, I guess. He seemed very fit. Muscular.”

  “He could have been old enough to be a visitor during his mother’s stay. I will pull a few strings to see if we can get access to the…”

  “Or, in theory, someone could get them sooner,” Ted said.

  Sheriff Ryan pushed a tired hand through his hair, causing the short hair to stick straight up. “Don’t get caught, and we never had this conversation, son.”

  Ted nodded.

  “In the meantime, Burt, I need your team to help out in the search. I have four uniforms besides Tom able to assist right now. More will arrive in the morning, but I don’t think we have that long.”

  “We’ll do what we can.”

  “I appreciate this. I have already put a uniform on each of the elevator exits. If that baby moves, they will call it in. Ted, you’ve got to keep us in communication. Beth, find us information on those goons. I don’t look forward to dealing with thugs only one of us can see. Now, the flesh and blood Karl, you PEEPs leave to us.”

  Mia wavered a bit. A wave of dizziness hit her. “Um, this may sound petty, but is there anything to eat? My blood sugar has tanked.”

  “You’re not the only one,” John confessed. “I put Butch in charge of bringing in some sandwiches. They should be here soon.”

  Ted offered Mia some of his Little Debbie stash, and she smiled. Ted was always prepared with sugar and caffeine. The men left the truck, and Mia worked her way over to the lounge chair and sat down. The day’s events flooded her mind. “Ted, has anyone talked to the teens yet?”

  Ted raised his finger, as he was almost in the county medical record data base. Once in, he motioned to Beth to pull up a chair and start researching.

  “According to the cops, Craig is still unconscious, and Melanie is on her way to a Chicago hospital for surgery.”

  “Poor kids.” Mia rubbed her neck. “Got any coffee left?”

  “It’s cold, and it’s my special brew.”

  “Ah,” Mia hesitated, “pour me some, please. I need it. I will go into detox later.”

  Ted pulled out the red thermos with the skull and crossbones warning on it, loosened the lid, poured a mug of the brew, and handed it to Mia.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” Beth asked. “Last time I had some I was so jittery I shook a filling loose,” she warned.

  Mia laughed and drank the noxious coffee and dined on the jellyroll. “You know Murphy has been awful quiet. I better check on him.” Mia got up and left Beth and Ted to their work.

  ~

  Mia and Murphy walked away from the truck. She was tired but tried not to show it. He too had had a day of it. He was away from his beloved farm and the woods he found so much solace in. Murphy didn’t actually know about drawing power, he never really thought about it. When Mia bilocated she had a small window of activity before she needed to draw energy. Murphy just was. She had teased him that he was a very complacent ghost. Well, he had been a very complacent person before he was murdered. Fact was, he died under one of his beloved trees.

  When the ghost hunters first arrived at the farm. Mia warned him things would be different. He found he liked different. He had watched as Mia, the outcast, was taken in and accepted by this group of misfits, and she had recently found love with her high school crush Whitney. Murphy had feelings for Mia, but he knew that there wasn’t much of a future with a ghost, no matter what fiction writers told you. He was content to have her back in a fight and roam his farm in the times in between. Death seemed to suit Murphy just fine.

  Mia stood staring in the window of the equipment van. She held Whit’s phone in her hand. She watched him for a while before opening the door and climbing in beside him. “Do you really hate me?” she asked him in a quiet voice.

  He didn’t answer. Whether he was asleep or pretending to be mattered not, his silence spoke volumes. Mia put the phone in his pocket and tenderly buttoned the flap.

  “Get back to me when you make up your mind. Remember that I tried to save Sherry too.” Mia touched his chest and felt it rise and fall a while before she quietly slid from her seat and left the vehicle.

  The click of the door and the fading overhead light didn’t seem to rouse Whit, but a tear worked its way down his cheek, where other tears had fallen before.

  Chapter Nine

  Sheriff Ryan led his team to the hidden stairway located by Mike on the blueprint. It was behind a false façade just around the back of the ground floor elevator. Mike and Burt were armed with devices that would alert them to paranormal entities. Each had a box of salt tucked in their back pocket. A lesson hard learned on their last investigation was to always have salt at hand. Mia tested her earpiece. A burp, caused by her wolfing down a tuna salad sandwich minutes before, escaped while she was voice testing. This amused Ted. He burped his response back to her. She laughed, causing the serious Burt to give her the evil eye. He mouthed “children” at her. She dropped her eyes and pretended shame.

  Mike was quiet this investigation. He didn’t have to be told to know the seriousness of the situation. He didn’t have time to shave his Hollywood jaw and was glad that no filming was going on. His mother told him that she was proud of him on the phone earlier. He hadn’t heard that in a while.

  “Ted to Mike.”

  “Mike here,” he answered, tightening the straps on his equipment.

  “Just doing a voice check, over.”

  “Over.”

  Burt looked at Mike and sensed his nerves. Mia had the shakes too, although he was sure hers were from imbibing some of Ted’s joy juice. Each person had to bring their A-game. This was too important for them to lose focus. “Ted, over.”

  “Go ahead, Red Leader.”

  “Coms working?”

  “Tested and confirmed, over.”

/>   “Law enforcement?”

  “Plugged into our system, but you three will not be able to hear them, or them you. All will hear me.”

  “Understood, over,” Burt said and caught Sheriff Ryan’s eye. “We’re ready.”

  John nodded and started down the stairs.

  The lower they went, the more the dampness made the air clammy. Mia worried about the girls getting ill in the damp. There was a tingle on her arm. Mia turned and smiled as Murphy appeared next to her. He put his axe on his shoulder and winked at her. She blushed and wagged her finger at him.

  Tom, who was bringing up the rear, watched Mia’s communication with thin air. He understood how Mia could be mistaken for a whacko. There had always been whispers about her. She had a pretty hard time of it in school. He was amazed that she didn’t hold onto any bitterness against their classmates. If she did, she hid it well. She was still cordial to all. His mother admired how as a young girl Mia took care of herself when her parents took off and after graduation took care of her ailing grandmother.

  He had yet to actually see Murphy, but he didn’t need proof to know he was there. Ever since the conflict in Cold Creek Hollow, he had been changed. He no longer took for granted that he had to see it to believe it. A small part of him envied Mia’s relationship with the axe man.

  The group moved towards the elevator. They agreed to start there. See if they could find a trail, so the whole maze, that was the basement, would not have to be searched. John and Tom took their time examining the dusty floor. Murphy moved behind them and pointed towards an east moving corridor.

  “I think east,” John said with little confidence.

  “Murphy agrees,” Mia said quietly.

  “Good.” John drew his service weapon and moved down the hall.

  Mike put away his EMF reader as Murphy was making it squawk with his presence. He instead pulled out a camera and busied himself with the lens.

  Burt scanned the rooms that they passed. He wanted to make sure nothing was waiting there to ambush them.