Elizabeth's eyes widened. “So, are we allowed to go down there? To the basement, I mean?” She looked to me, pulling a flashlight from her bag. “Just think of what we might find down there!”
“I wouldn't,” warned Terrence. “I really wouldn't. It's not all blocked off, of course, but it'd be reckless.”
I was surprised at the groundsman's willingness to let us explore the asylum without his supervision and said as much. “Is it really OK with you and Mr. Blake if we walk around this building on our own?”
Terrence cleared his throat. “Tell you the truth mister, I don't have a dog in that race. What you people do here ain't none of my business, unless you're messing with stuff, being destructive. And more than that,” he said, motioning to Elizabeth, “if y'all are here to stir things up... look for things that don't wanna be seen, then I'm gonna tell you flat out that I'll have no part. Bad enough walking this place alone during the day. I ain't got no interest in things of that kind. As for Mr. Blake, well, you signed his papers. He didn't give me any kinda plan to follow, so I expect he thinks you're trustworthy enough.” He paused “Of course, if one of you gets into trouble—gets hurt—then you're going to have a hell of a time getting ahold of me in this giant goddamn building. It's seriously massive—bigger than it looks even on the outside.”
“OK, then I think it might be prudent for us to follow you around. For a little while, at least.” I shot Elizabeth daggers, preempting her complaints with, “Once we get used to the place, maybe we can head off on our own for a bit of exploring.”
Terrence switched his flashlight back on and started across the room, towards the double-doors. “I tell you, I've been working in this building for years now and I still ain't 'gotten used to the place'. It's not the kind of place you ever warm to, and it's got a mind of its own. Be mindful of that.”
* * *
Beyond the double-doors was a hallway of both incredible length and almost impenetrable darkness. If not for the dim-burning bulbs scattered every ten yards or so along the stretch, and the light issuing from Terrence and Elizabeth's flashlights, I might have thought the four of us slowly marching into an earthen cavern. It seemed to stretch on for many hundreds of feet, and it wasn't until we'd walked for a few minutes that its end entered into view.
Some feet into the hallway hefty wooden doors began to turn up. Some bore flimsy plastic placards denoting the uses of the rooms, while others were merely unlabeled doors. Dutifully, but with great reluctance, Terrence opened each of these doors as we walked and gave the rooms beyond a quick glance before continuing onto the next. The three of us ducked into them as well, glimpsing more of the abandonment and ruin we'd spied earlier in the back lobby.
“These were offices, once,” said Terrence as he shouldered open a door marked NURSING SUPERVISOR. He brought his light in with him, standing in the doorway and casting it around in search of leaks, vermin or other red flags. The darkness in this room, though, didn't seem to want to be penetrated. The air was heavy—the density of dust in the air lent the impression that the darkness itself had gained a syrupy mass. Against one yellowed, wallpapered wall was a wooden desk and two chairs. A lamp sat on the floor beside the door, and a smattering of old nursing books—drug handbooks—sat in teetering piles, their covers almost unreadable beneath the veil of dust.
We walked on. Jake unearthed his flashlight and switched it on, fixing the beam on the high ceiling. He shuffled behind Elizabeth, who was so transfixed by her surroundings that she kept stopping in the middle of the hall and colliding with him. I lingered in the rear, hands in my pockets, just trying to keep the place from casting its spell over me.
Wandering down this hall of black stone, I felt myself at war against my environment. There were influences here, long dormant, that were pressing in on me from all directions like so much atmospheric pressure. In the bobbing of the lights and in the cramped, dust-choked rooms, I couldn't help but envision the obsidian walls around me contracting. It was like we were wandering down the esophagus of some immense animal.
Terrence poked his head into a room whose placard read LOUNGE. The door stuck a little, and he had to lean into it to get it to open. Once he'd muscled through the door, he panned about the room, bringing to light a pair of long, cafeteria-style tables, a wooden stand topped by an ancient-looking microwave and a pair of boxy televisions stacked atop one another.
I decided to break the silence. Walking down this hall in perfect quiet was getting to be disorienting. “So, Terrence, mind if I ask you a question? You ever seen anything in this building? Seen something that you can't explain?”
The groundskeeper slammed the door to the lounge shut and trudged onward, giving a half-shake of his head. “I ain't ever seen anything I can't explain, no, but I have seen the kinds of things you're hinting at.”
I exchanged a curious look with Jake. “Go on.”
“Building like this,” replied Terrence, slapping at the walls, “it's got a life all its own. A history. Just because you shut it down and empty it out doesn't mean it won't go on living. It's got a new life now, a secluded life. And it keeps things hid. But like anything else with a mind, with a history, sometimes its memories slip out from between the cracks. And if you're around at just the right time, in just the right place, you might see 'em with your own eyes, these little fragments of the past.” He then added, with a grunt, “And you'll wish you hadn't.”
“So, what have you seen, then?” asked Elizabeth. “Ghosts? Or...”
“You could call them that,” said the groundsman, shoving open an unmarked door. “Sometimes it's something real slight—you feel like you're being followed down a long hall like this one. You can't hear no footsteps, can't see nothing behind you, but you still feel it all around. Other times, it's a bit of cold—or a noise that's just out of place. And then, sometimes, you see things.” He had some trouble shutting the door, his hand playing nervously against the knob. “Once or twice, when I've been in here too late, I've seen something... It was like a girl, I think. Long hair, dressed in her white gown. Must have been a patient here, I told myself. Sometimes she's crying. Sometimes she doesn't make a noise, but just looks at you from across the room.”
Jake tugged at his collar, noticeably uncomfortable. His gaze darted up and down the passage, settling on the next door in the stretch, which just so happened to be marked with red tape. Two long strips of red tape had been fastened across the door in an “X”. It was thick stuff, duct tape, and looked like it'd been in place for a long time. “What's in there?” asked Jake, regarding the door with a quiver in his throat.
Terrence passed it by, replying, “It's closed. Pretty sure there was a mold problem in that one; leak from the upstairs. Got it patched some months back, but that room ain't safe. Come along now.”
I turned around briefly, looking back at the length of hall we'd covered, and half-expected to see someone standing behind me. “So, this passage was for staff, huh?” I asked, trying to ward off the growing dread I felt. My stomach was roiling, wasn't playing nice with the Taco Bell from earlier. “Just a lot of offices and lounges and such. What's down the next hall?”
Terrence was some time in replying, choosing first to canvass a little room stocked with empty metal shelves. “The first ward's coming up next,” he said. “Up ahead we'll be hanging a slight right.”
Not a few minutes later we found ourselves at the bend and started through a new set of double doors—a heftier set—into an even darker passage whose floors were done partially in off-white tiles.
There were lights set into the ceiling and along the walls, but none of them were on. I only spied them in the glow of the flashlights, and at that moment, standing in the darkened wing, I wished I'd brought one of my own. What if you got separated from the group? I mused. To be isolated in darkness such as this would be maddening. The very thought could give me an ulcer.
“Bear with me, folks,” said Terrence, running his hand across a number of switches on the w
all. Finally, after some trial and error, he hit the right ones and the hall was brought into dull focus by the flickering of orange bulbs. “This here was the first ward.”
“The ward for the cases of least severity,” said Elizabeth, sounding like a tour guide on a New York City bus. All she needed was a microphone in her hand and a bunch of half-snoozing passengers.
Though our steps left tracks along the dust-coated tiles, this particular section of the building still retained something of its former sterility. The walls here were not black stone, but rather white. The paint that had been applied to them ages ago was in a terrible state, flaking off in several places so as to reveal the dark base beneath. Most of the rooms were numbered; small metal numerals had been nailed above each of the door frames. 01, 02, 03, 04... They went on and on.
As before, Terrence spent time checking out each of the rooms. He was casual in his inspections; whether he was simply lazy, or whether he was rushing out of fear I couldn't say. We were some minutes into this passage when I was reminded of something Jake's aunt, Josephine, had told us. Enid Lancaster had been admitted to this particular section in the early to mid 80's. Something had changed in her over the course of her stay, however, which had forced the staff to move her into the third ward. As we walked along, I wondered which of these rooms might have been hers.
“I want to stop,” announced Elizabeth. She took her recorder out of her backpack and looked back to Jake and I. “We need to go into one of these rooms and try for an EVP.”
Terrence glanced at the recording device suspiciously and then bobbed his head. “I'm gonna continue on, if you don't mind. I'll just be down this here hall. Gonna take me a minute to check all of these rooms anyhow.”
As Terrence shuffled away, the three of us were left standing in the middle of the dim hall. Jake still hadn't turned off his flashlight, and was staring up at the numbers above the doors, lips pursed.
“Which room?” I asked.
“You pick,” was Elizabeth's reply. She tapped a few buttons on the recorder, tried it out with a brief recording her repeating, “testing, testing,” and then waited for me to announce my choice.
No room in the joint had any meaning to me; from where I stood they were all in the same rundown condition, caked with dust. But as I scanned the room numbers, one after another, the gears started turning and I found myself wandering down the hall. Pointing up at the number above my chosen door, I said, “Let's try this one.”
Brow furrowed, Jake let his light rest on the metal numerals for a time. “Room 28? Why this room in particular?” he asked.
Elizabeth looked to me, also curious about my rationale.
I shrugged. “This number, 28, keeps turning up everywhere. We're here on the 28th anniversary of the Third Ward Incident, on the 28th day of the month, when a 28-year old patient went postal. May as well keep with the theme.”
Running her thumb over the red RECORD button on her device, Elizabeth motioned to the closed door of room 28. “OK, then. After you, professor.”
21
Room 28, as expected, was just another windowless hovel.
Cobwebs floated eerily in the corners as we stepped inside and stirred up the long-stagnant air. The paint in this room had held up better than that of the hall, and only seemed to be peeling up near the door. In one corner, lacking only a mattress, was metal bed frame draped in dust-scored linens. Across from them on the right side of the room were a sink and toilet. In the ceiling above there sat a metal track, through which a curtain or partition of some kind might have once been hung.
Standing at the center of the room, I followed the beams of the flashlights, dodging gossamer tendrils as I took in our surroundings. “Pretty spartan in here.”
Elizabeth placed a finger to her lips, shushing me like a fussy librarian, and then raised the recorder up over her head. In a loud, clear voice, she called out, “We wish to make contact with the spirits of this building. If you can hear me, give me a sign. Tell me your name, how long you've been here... anything you like.”
The three of us waited in silence. I fought back a sneeze while Elizabeth shifted the recorder from one hand to the other.
She repeated herself a few times, giving any spectral inhabitant ample time to answer, and then she lowered the device, switching it off. “We'll listen to it later. That's the only way we'll know if we got anything. The recorder can pick up sounds that our ears might miss.”
Jake backed up towards the door. “OK, cool, let's go and find Terrence now,” he said, voice wavering.
“No,” she shot back. “Not yet.” Switching the recorder back on, she called out once again to any listening spirits. “We're here to make contact with the spirits of this asylum. In particular... we're looking for the spirit of Enid Lancaster. Enid... if you're listening, give us a sign.”
“Why would you—” I began, only to get shushed—more intensely this time. At the very mention of Enid's name in this dark space, I couldn't help but feel unnerved. We were invoking the killer's spirit on her home turf. Here, Enid was more than just a footnote in an article, an anecdote. She was, arguably, a part of the scenery. I felt at that moment—and I told myself that it was nothing but a draft—a marked drop in the ambient temperature. Still damp with rain, my skin picked up on the slight dip and answered with a shudder. Where might this wave of cold have come from in this stuffy old room? The cold was sucked away almost as quickly as it'd set in, and I backed up towards Jake, smoothing down the hairs on the back of my neck.
Elizabeth waited for almost a full minute within the room, her flashlight pointed low and leaving her mostly buried in darkness. When she finally shut off the recorder and stashed it in her bag, I felt a twinge of relief. This room, I felt, had grown darker somehow. The walls didn't look so white anymore, and although I knew it wasn't possible, it looked to me as though the space had shrunk—that it was gradually closing in on us from every angle.
From the hallway came a sound that made all three of us jump to attention.
Footsteps.
They were slow, uncertain things, and that they coincided with a slow dimming of the lights in the hall only served to lend them an air of certain malignity. I edged slowly towards the door, trying my damnedest to mask my surprise, and prepared to glance out into the immense hallway. As they continued, I thought I could make out certain characteristics in them. Was that a swish-swish sound I was hearing, as of a hospital gown swaying?
My heart seized. Was it possible that something—perhaps Enid herself—was coming this way?Had the very utterance of her name been enough to summon her up from whatever dark corner of this compound she ordinarily lurked in? No, I told myself. No, that's impossible. Ghosts aren't real. Enid's been dead for almost thirty years, there's no way that—
Jake poked his head out into the hall and nearly lost his balance. Cracking a weak grin, he placed a hand against the grimy wall and nodded to the figure ambling down the hall.
That is, Terrence. The groundsman paused at the doorway to room 28, apparently the next on his tour, and gave it a once-over. Then, grunting, he continued across the hall to number 29.
I exhaled a long-held breath and paced out into the hall. The only one of us who hadn't freaked had been Elizabeth, and as she emerged from the room, her expression showcased something of disappointment. Tugging on Jake's arm, she pointed further down the hall. “Let's keep going,” she suggested.
“No, I want to follow Terrence here a while longer,” I replied. “He knows the building, and I think it would be safer. Better to stick together, wouldn't you say?”
Jake gave an enthusiastic nod, but Elizabeth could only summon a grimace. “He's taking too long, looking into each and every room. We have a lot of ground to cover, professor. I'd like to get a move on.”
Ignoring her, I flagged down the groundskeeper as he exited room 30 and asked him a few questions. “So, is there anything else you can tell us about this building? Were you familiar with it when it was still in
operation?”
Terrence chuckled, scratching at his leathery cheek. “No, thank goodness. I never did get stuck in the loony bin. Anyhow, I was still living back in Tennessee in the 80's.”
“Ah, you're not from around here, then?”
He shook his head. “No, but I've heard plenty about what went on here back in the day. More than I'd like.” His voice lost whatever jovial edge it had previously held as he ducked into the next few rooms. “I'm glad to see this place shut down. Ain't no one deserves to be locked up in here like an animal. Some of the characters that used to pass for staff in this place were monsters—far worse than any of the patients they cared for, I reckon.”
I nodded. “Say, the doctors who worked here... where were their offices?”
He shut a door, pausing only a moment to think. “Most of 'em are up on the second floor.”
Jake quickened his step, not wanting to fall too far behind me or Elizabeth. He studied the peeling walls with horrified wonder, wincing at the rust stains and exposed pipes.
“Would it be possible for us to see them?” I continued. “There's one doctor, in particular, whose office I would be interested in seeing.”
Elizabeth glanced at me sharply, already knowing where I was going with this. “Dr. Corvine?” she muttered.
“That depends on whether or not this particular office is sealed off. Won't know until we get up there, of course.” Terrence threw open the next in this seemingly endless succession of doors and stepped aside as a lengthy centipede darted across the floor. It reminded me of the one I'd seen in my apartment, however this one was longer and more well-fed than that specimen had been. I seized at the sight of it, bumping into Jake, and moved to stomp on it. The groundskeeper stopped me, though. “Now, don't go doin' that,” he warned. “Those 'pedes don't hurt a damn thing. They're beneficial, ya hear? They kill off all the other stuff in here, keep the spiders and cockroaches at bay. I'd rather see those things around than the wolf spiders and recluses.” He straightened his ball cap. “Speaking of which, watch your step. We do get them recluses now and then, and their bite ain't pretty.”
Asylum: The Afterlife investigations #1 Page 13