The Third Floor

by The Third Floor (epub)

  As soon as everyone was in and safe, they all collapsed on the floor. After allowing for ten minutes’ rest, Ashley cleared her throat, and said, "Alright, let's see what we've got here. We need to get the cars and trucks inside and seal off any exits."

  They explored as they went, opening doors and going down hallways to see where they went. From what they'd seen so far of the building, they couldn't tell if they were in a school, a hospital, a prison, or an office building, because they found rooms along the way that would have been at home in any of those places. Here's a classroom across the hall from an exam room. On the bottom floor, a corner of the building housed five padded cells. If necessary, they could erect a barricade in front of the doors just using the empty desks they found.

  "Welcome to The Trust," Ashley said.

  "What?" Sara asked.

  "Welcome to The Trust," she repeated. "That's what the sign said when we pulled up. Welcome to The Trust."

  "What's The Trust?"

  "No idea."

  "This place is huge."

  "Which should work to our advantage, I hope," Ashley said. She opened a door. Another office. "Doesn't this place have a kitchen? Some place to store the food?"

  "A place this size, you'd think so."

  "Yeah, you'd think."

  She had sent Tuck and Derek to find a way to get the cars inside, while Luther took the twins to find a safe place for the Dead. Meanwhile Ashley and Sara explored.

  The electricity was still on, and there wasn't as much dust as either had expected.

  "It's almost like the place has been waiting," Sara said.

  "That doesn't fill me with hope."

  "Why not?"

  "What if we're not what it's been waiting for. If there's someone else due here?"

  It made sense. Power to all the abandoned buildings had been cut off decades ago, and the last place Ashley had been in like this had had a carpet of dust.

  "Here," Sara said, bringing Ashley out of her own head. "Cafeteria."

  "Sure?"

  They went in and Ashley was greeted by a room longer than it was wide, and lined in five rows across from one end of the room to the other with long tables and light blue plastic chairs.

  "Great," Ashley said, heading for the back of the room. "If the power’s on in the rest of the building, there might be a refrigerator where we can put the food."

  They found it and went to find the others and bring the food down.

  The plan was to meet back where they'd split, on the second floor. When Tuck and Derek returned, they'd bring the tools to close this door off and make sure no one else entered the building, at least through there. But by the time Ashley and Sara found the way back--opening the door to make sure it was the correct room and Ashley saw one of the birds clinging to the bars, its head in the room, squawking and shrieking, but not able to force its body through--Tuck and Derek still hadn't returned.

  They leaned against the wall, waiting, listening to the birds on the other side of the door trying to claw their way into the room. One squawked so loud, Sara jumped. Ashley, however, seemed too zoned out to notice. She had her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. Her eyes were closed and she was thinking about Phillip and Millie.

  Tuck and Derek returned and they went to work covering the door. They took the top off one of the desks lying around the place and nailed it directly to the doorframe.

  "You got the cars inside?" she asked, sliding up the wall to her feet.

  "Yeah, pretty much," Derek said. Tuck handed him a nail and Derek drove it through the desktop.

  "Pretty much?" Ashley asked.

  "The Viewliner," Tuck said. "There were a few birds in it, so we left it out there."

  "We should be able to get it later, maybe tomorrow," Derek said.

  Ashley nodded.

  She let them work while she wandered to the other end of the hall.

  She still wasn't sure what this place was, but she'd make finding out a priority. Get everyone settled and then explore and find out where they were. Who knew what they might find lying around here, but if it was something that might help them--canned goods or extra clothes, maybe--it would be nice to find out.

  She opened a door, looked in. She'd never heard of it before, The Trust.

  "All done," Tuck called down to her.

  Ashley closed the door and joined them again at the other end of the hall.

  "Now we wait for Luther and the twins and they'll take us back to where they took the Dead. We'll set ourselves up somewhere near them and . . . " she trailed off.

  "Then we'll start the wait," Sara said.

  "Get comfortable, folks, and take it all in 'cause this is home for the next year."

  "If we last that long," Derek said. "We don't have enough food for a year."

  "If it comes down to it," Ashley said, "we'll last as long as we can then send someone out to loot a store."

  "Send someone where?" Tuck asked. "There wasn't anything for miles."

  "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not having the best time of it right now, so please, if you have a better idea, give it to me."

  Tuck shook his head, kept his mouth shut.

  "Then like I said," she went on, "we go as long as we can. If we don't find anything here--."

  "There is a cafeteria," Sara blurted.

  "Right," Ashley said. "There's a cafeteria downstairs, so I see no reason to believe we won't find something here. But if we don't, we send someone out. I'll go if I have to."

  Tuck nodded. Derek looked like he was going to say something, but before he could, Luther and the twins, Matt and Mary, returned.

  The group was led downstairs and Luther showed them where the Dead were staying. Then he led them down another hall, around a corner, and into another room. This one looked like a gymnasium.

  "Big enough?" Luther asked.

  "This is fine," Ashley said.

  The doors were propped open, and Tuck and Derek took them to the vehicles. A little over an hour later, the family's belongings were stashed in the gym and they all stood back and looked at home.

  DEATH SIGHT:

  A WILL CASTLETON NOVEL

  David Bain

  PART ONE:

  DROWNING

  1

  The dead stared at him with dark, empty, accusing sockets that formerly held their eyes.

  Will’s feet were rooted in a nightlit desert. A full moon. A dry, coppery odor to the air. Cacti. Rocks. Low dunes rising out of the ankle-deep water.

  For the desert was also the sea.

  Will and the dead stood in the ankle-deep waters of the desert, staring at each other.

  One of him.

  Hundreds of them.

  Everyone who would now die because he was still alive.

  Everyone already dead who would come into his life.

  All the ghosts he would ever create, ever encounter.

  He could not make out the faces of most of the throng of shadowy figures.

  Those in front he recognized, however.

  They were the faces of an entire SWAT team, cops from several branches of law enforcement, still in their tattered uniforms.

  Horribly disfigured, all of them.

  Only half their flesh still on their raw faces.

  Limbs missing.

  Their eyes infinite wells of unfathomable dark.

  He knew the corpse, the spirit that stood at the forefront. Cummings. A decent, if overbearing cop in life.

  Will could see Marshal Cummings’ tongue through the hole in his flesh, through the gap in his teeth, his jaw.

  Will could see the tongue move like a thick worm as Cummings said, “Look down, Castleton.”

  The water wasn’t water.

  It was blood.

  “The tide will rise,” Cummings said. “You’ll drown in an ocean of blood before you’re through.”

  Then Will would realize he was already covered in the stuff.

  ***

  The vision would
wash over him, even when he was wide awake.

  Will would come out of it screaming.

  Thus, the powers that be sent him to see Smith.

  ***

  “The blood and the darkness,” Will said. “The death. The outright evil.”

  “Not what you signed up for,” Smith said.

  “I mean, to put bad guys away, yes. To do some good in the world, yes. But a U.S. Marshal’s supposed to protect federal witnesses, oversee major meth lab busts, that sort of thing. My life since the accident, though…”

  “Not what you signed up for,” Smith repeated. He clicked his ballpoint pen, working his thumb, making a sound like a castanet. Maybe it was good this shrink had a nervous habit. Will had thought the whole thing about psychiatrists scribbling in a notebook while you talked was a myth, but not with this guy.

  “We can’t always predict the directions our lives will take.”

  Will straightened in his chair, frowned at the man. “Are you being funny?”

  Smith laughed. Guy with silver, slick-backed hair, suspenders, red tie, blue button-down shirt, his sport coat slung casually over his high-backed leather chair. A guy whose clothes were probably worth more than what Will paid for his new apartment here in the city per month: laughing at him. Will in biker boots - he’d rode his Harley here - jeans, Hold Steady concert t-shirt, black leather jacket which he’d refused to take off so he could leave faster.

  “Sorry. Poor word choice.” Smith clicked his pen again, reclined slightly in his chair. Smith sat behind his big faux-mahogany desk. Will hunkered in a seat to the side. Open space, between them. There was indeed a couch, but Smith hadn’t suggested he use it.

  Smith looked at Will as if he expected Will to speak.

  Will chose not to.

  Mist had collected on the window which took up the entire eastern wall of the room. Lake Michigan loomed beyond, cold and gray and choppy. Wind buffeted the building.

  Something hissed like a cat and Will flinched involuntarily - an unseen timed aerosol canister had sprayed an artificial pine scent into the room from high atop Smith's numerous heavily-laden shelves of psychology texts.

  “Listen, Mr. Castleton. Will. Do you think you can trust me?”

  “Tell you the truth, I’m afraid I’m going to end up in some scholarly journal as Patient X. Or, worse yet, in a tell-all book. I have trust issues when it comes to telling the skeletons in my closet. With good reason, but I think it's one of those things I'm supposed to ‘reveal to you, like it's a deep, dark secret.”

  “I’m my own boss. I don’t need to publish. All the confidentiality laws apply to what you want to do here. And I can’t write for shit. My girlfriend - wife now - wrote all my papers in college.”

  “You must be a great psychiatrist then. How'd you pass your exams?”

  “I might be exaggerating a little. But I won’t write about you.”

  “You could get a ghost writer. That would be particularly ironic in my case.”

  “So you're ready to talk about that aspect of your life? The alleged ghosts and such? I understand about the extreme nature of the cases you’ve been involved with. Your accident in Florida, the dead girl in Michigan, what you witnessed in Arizona. These things couldn’t have been easy. But the claims of supernatural involvement…”

  “They’re not ‘claims.’”

  “Sorry. Bad word choice again. Let me put it this way.... These waking nightmares you’ve had - ”

  “Visions. Before the fact.”

  “The ones in Michigan…”

  “Okay, those were after the fact. Obviously.”

  “I think it’s important we talk about these visions.”

  “Look, I get it. You’re saying I’ve experienced terrible things and I'm having waking nightmares about them. You’re going to try to convince me my claims they were visions are some sort of mental compensation on my part, my way of dealing with latent guilt or something.”

  “Why would anyone feel guilt when they’ve helped solve crimes? When they’ve put bad men in jail for what they’ve done?”

  “I don’t feel guilt. That’s just it. What I feel is spooked. What I feel is … manipulated by some higher force. Like my life’s not my own. And whatever this thing is, it keeps wanting to draw me back in. To draw me back under. I feel like I’m drowning again. But this time I’m drowning in blood, not saltwater.”

  “Interesting. Why don’t you start by telling me about the accident.”

  Will opened his mouth. Closed it.

  “Okay, they’re just claims. I didn’t really have visions. I just got lucky in the hospital in Florida. I just did some spectacular detective work in Michigan. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time in Arizona. Can I get a pass now? Can you tell my bosses I said what they wanted to hear? Can I go back to work now?”

  Click, click, click went the pen.

  “I think it’s important we talk about these events in your life.”

  “Is there an echo in this room? But okay, let’s talk. You’ve got to make your money some way.”

  “Your accident. There was a death involved.”

  The guy wasn't going to be rattled.

  Will sighed. He clasped his hands in his lap, stared down at them.

  “A death. Yeah.”

  He looked up and met Smith’s eyes - which he hadn't really done up until this point. They were a washed-out blue. Surprisingly mild. Interested. Non-judgmental. And there was, perhaps, a depth Will hadn’t expected to see there.

  “Okay, if we’re going to play this game,” Will said, “let’s play it full on. I’ll tell you this much - if I feel guilt for any of this bullshit my so-called superiors are making me come here and talk about, it’s for what happened on that god-damned boat…”

  C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances were in the Vile Things anthology, Fiction365.com, Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways. His novel, Revelations, is available in hardcover, trade paperback or ebook formats from Necro Publications.

  Copyright © 2012, Charles Moore

  All rights reserved

  Acknowledgments:

  Cover photo taken by C. Dennis Moore

  Manipulated by David G. Barnett

  The Man in the Window is Copyright © 2011, Charles Moore, published by Crossroad Press.

  Revelations is Copyright © 2012, Charles Moore, published by Necro Publications.

  Death Sight is Copyright © 2012, David Bain, published by a/a Productions.

  Also by C. Dennis Moore

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