I ran a palm against my face and started towards Jake, shaking my head. “It was nothing... it's just—”
Thunk-Thunk-Thunk.
We both jerked to alertness, glancing back at the three coolers.
Thunk-Thunk-Thunk-Thunk-Thunk-Thunk.
From within them came an infernal pounding. I felt my legs going weak as the sounds of unseen hands striking the insides of those cooler doors filled the room. The assault from within them was cacophonous, as if every soul that'd ever been stored within them during their operation had suddenly returned and was now clamoring to be released.
Jake's eyes glazed over and whatever shreds of courage he'd still maintained up to that point fled him instantly. With a gasping cry, he pried open the door to the morgue and crashed out into the basement hall on his knees. From there, he managed to claw his way to a standing position, where he huddled in a tight mass against the damp wall and tried not to sob.
I followed him, and it's fair to say that I wasn't in a much better state than he.
Even as the door to the morgue fell shut, the pounding did not cease. If anything, it grew wilder, more agitated. Grabbing Jake's shoulder, I guided him back down the hall the way we'd come, damn near running to build as much distance as possible from the morgue.
As we went, I noticed something that made my stomach roil and very nearly surrender its contents. We fled, jogging into the dark stretch, and kept our lights close so that we wouldn't miss the upcoming junction. But as we ran, I happened, now and then, to glance at the floor.
The small, wet footprints we'd followed to the morgue only minutes ago were no longer there. Not a single trace of them remained, almost as if they'd never been there at all.
“We were lured,” I gasped, slowing down and leaning against the wall. In the distance, the savage pounding from the coolers was heard to continue.
Wiping at his eyes and throwing his light around nervously, gaze bumbling this way and that, Jake asked, “What, to the morgue?”
I nodded. “And to this asylum. Our arriving here... on this day... was no accident.”
28
“What do you mean? What led us here?” asked Jake as we continued down the hall.
I kept telling him the same thing. “It doesn't matter.” I was asking myself the same question but recognized that this was no time to look for answers. We needed to find Terrence and Elizabeth and leave as quickly as possible.
“Was it the girl—Enid? The killer?” he chanced.
“I don't know,” I replied. The sounds issuing from the morgue had faded now. Perhaps they'd stopped altogether. We'd gone straight down the hall for more than five minutes and had run most of the way. I stopped to gain my bearings, casting light all around the passage and hoping I might see a sign that would tell us where to go. My thoughts were in a frenzy, so it was possible I was simply confused, however I thought for sure we should have reached the junction by then. “OK... where are we?”
Jake kicked at a box of plastic binders. “I don't remember some of this stuff being here,” he said. “Are we going the right way?”
“We've been going in a straight line. We haven't had a chance to get turned around yet,” I shouted. “And, what, did you catalog everything laying around the hall when we were walking down here initially? Help me find that sign. Or a stairwell. Anything. Ignore all of this crap on the ground.”
We paced on further, uncertainly. I listened for the sound of footsteps, hoping that either Elizabeth or Terrence—or, better yet, both—would come waltzing over to us. Except for Jake's heavy, nervous breathing and the dripping of condensation there was nothing to hear, though. Another five minutes of the same path brought us no closer to the sign we sought.
“How is this possible?” I muttered. “We should have come across that sign by now. Where's the intersection?” I turned around, looking into the blackness behind me. “I don't even know where we are. We're in the same hall, but...” My head was starting to ache. Though the timing wasn't particularly good, I dug around in my pocket for my lighter and struck up a Viceroy.
Given two or three solid puffs, I felt the sanity returning.
“A-Are you allowed to smoke down here?” asked Jake.
“I couldn't give any less of a shit about the rules here,” I barked. “I just want out.”
Jake nodded sullenly, staying a few steps ahead so as to avoid the bulk of the smoke. “What do you think that was back there? In the morgue.”
I took a long drag, the nicotine helping to stave off my headache. “A hallucination,” I said. “At least, that's what I'd like to believe.”
“So, we both hallucinated that?” he asked. “How?”
“Beats the hell out of me.” I frowned. “I'd rather not think about it, OK? Let's just focus on finding a way out of here. If we find the stairs, we can leave through the back door. Once we're out, I'll call 9-1-1, or the fucking Navy, and they can send in a bunch of guys to find Elizabeth and Terrence.” I tossed the cigarette into a puddle and watched it fizzle out. “But the longer we wander down here, the more lost we're gonna get. Remember what Terrence said.”
Jake cocked his head to the side. “Well, I remember him saying he didn't think it was wise for us to walk through here and stir up ghosts. He believed in that stuff and thought our visit was in poor taste. I wonder why he works here at all. Like, what happened in the morgue? You couldn't pay me enough to deal with that.”
“The building isn't usually like this,” I replied. “Tonight is special, I think. It's the anniversary of the Third Ward Incident. Had he known, then he probably wouldn't have shown up today.” It was all conjecture, but I continued anyway. “It's very possible that Terrence and Elizabeth are seeing strange things like the two of us did. This building, or whatever's in it, is playing head games with us, and I doubt we're the only targets. Something drew us to this building, wanted us to be here on this very date. And now it's got us. That's why we need to hurry up and get the fuck out.”
Jake's complexion paled. “Yeah, but... but what? What brought us here?”
I didn't have a good answer for that. “I don't know. Maybe it was Enid. Maybe it was that crackpot, Dr. Corvine. Maybe something else.” I studied the walls for doors, nearly tripping on a knot of damp towels that'd fallen from a teeming box. “I've felt, for a while now, that something might be waiting for us here. Something called out nightly from the asylum—reached that radio DJ. And when I got the call that night, heard it for myself, they stopped. Almost as if the caller had been trying to reach me all along—as if they knew I was going to put an ad in the paper looking for local spooks.”
“How is that possible?”
“I'm not saying it is,” was my reply. “It's just what it seems like, under the circumstances.”
“Well, it's been a hell of a trip,” said Jake. “If Elizabeth doesn't have her proof of the paranormal by the time we leave here I don't know what to say.”
If we make it out of here, I nearly said.
Something broke into the scenery to our right, catching my eye. A door. I hadn't seen it earlier, on our march to the morgue, but it looked to be of the same size and shape as the stairwell door we'd taken to the basement. It bore no sign, but lacking any other options I decided to take a peek inside.
It was a bit stuck, having settled into its warped frame, but at opening it I glimpsed the beginning of what appeared to be a staircase. Any happiness I might've felt at the discovery ebbed away instantly as I took a step inside and realized these steps went down, rather than up. Where they led was impossible to say. A cool and soil-scented air emanated from down below, and the arc of my light revealed a bend in the concrete staircase just a few steps down.
“I don't know for sure, but it looks like these stairs lead deeper down, into some sort of sub-cellar.” I stepped out and had another look at the outside of the door, hoping that I'd simply overlooked a label as to its purpose. None existed, though. It was simply an unmarked door.
“Wh
at could be down there?” asked Jake. “Maybe, like, a furnace room?”
“I'm not sure,” I admitted. “It could be something like that. We won't know unless we go down the steps.” At this point, I hesitated. “Though, this isn't the direction I'd been hoping to go. I want to go up, to the lobby.”
“Do you think Elizabeth could be down there?” asked Jake, standing upon the top step. He then tried calling out to her. “Elizabeth? Babe?” His voice wavered. “You... you down here?”
Icy silence prevailed.
“Maybe we should keep walking,” I suggested. This was the first door we'd come across in some time, but descending would only serve to strand us deeper within the complex. Then again, it was possible that this set of stairs led the way to some sort of subterrane exit; the earthy smell, I wagered, could be a clue as to what awaited us. “Then again, maybe there's a way out down there. Maybe it's a tunnel, like the kind they would have used for deliveries. Know what I mean?” It was a stretch, but my desperation had made me hopeful. “Let's go down there and just have a look. If it's a dead-end, we'll double back.”
That was good enough for Jake, who stepped aside so that I could lead the way.
The door behind us closed with a terrible noise, and suddenly I felt we had found ourselves in a very remote compartment of the asylum indeed. With the vastness of the cellar behind us now, this stairwell—more cramped than I'd initially realized—felt like a separate world. We were marching deeper into the Earth, and my mind grazed the borders of myths about quests into the underworld. I was reminded, too, of Elizabeth's story. She'd claimed to have technically died, once, only to have been resuscitated. At returning to the world of the living she'd found herself possessed of perfect vision, a thing which she'd likened to a souvenir from the “other side”.
Now it was our turn to descend, almost literally, into Tartarus.
The hook in the stairs took us onto a separate flight, this one quite a bit longer than the first, and at the end of the stairs, at the edge of a smooth, concrete landing untouched by moisture or refuse, stood a door.
But it wasn't just any door—nothing at all like the one we'd just walked through. No, this door was made of thick metal and looked as though it fronted a fallout shelter. Roughly seven feet in height and roughly the same in width, the massive, windowless door had a complicated-looking mechanism for a handle—a wheel which was held in place by a couple of claw-shaped locks.
Jake gawked at the thing as his flashlight unearthed it from shadow.
Its most arresting quality had nothing whatever to do with its impressive construction, however. What most captured our attention as we stood before the door was the immense amount of red duct tape that had been stretched across the thing. An entire roll, it seemed, had been used for the purpose of securing this door. Tape blocked its every seam, was threaded through the circular handle—or, it should be said, had done so.
It appeared that very recently, the tape had been severed, pushed aside in certain places, and the door was presently sitting slightly ajar.
29
“Elizabeth.” The name left my lips immediately, on impulse. I reached out and touched the door, the metal cool and smooth.
“You think she went inside?” asked Jake, hanging back.
I nodded. “Look at the tape. It's been broken. There's probably a fifty-fifty chance of her still being in there.” Terrence had warned us away from any door marked in red tape; the tape was used to single out problem areas, where dangers were present. Of course, it hadn't been much a deterrent to Elizabeth, who'd wished to enter the building's furthest reaches. I stood outside the door for some time, listening, but could hear nothing within.
To my surprise, Jake nudged me away and took hold of the door, throwing his weight into it and pulling it open. “If she's still in there, then we need to find her. She could be hurt.”
I agreed with him, and even helped pull open the seemingly thousand-pound door, but that didn't mean I had no reservations. “Be careful,” I warned. “We don't know what's inside this room. If she's hurt, we could end up hurt, too.” The door opened just enough for the two of us to shimmy inside and we let it slam behind us. It did so with a crash that set the entire space vibrating.
The darkness that filled this chamber was a new breed. It was a foreign darkness—perfect except for the feeble efforts our small lights made. Standing just inside the room, thoughts of Tartarus returned to me and it took a considerable effort not to run back up those stairs.
How best to put it? This was the darkness of the grave, the darkness known only to the sightless eyes of those buried deep in the ground. Perfect blindness. I tried—and failed—to acquaint myself with the outlines of the room, quickly growing disoriented for its vastness. My light could only penetrate its depths so far before the light simply hit an insurmountable barrier of darkness. Jake's situation was the same, and so he relied instead on sound to guide his way, shouting, “Elizabeth! You in here?”
His voice came back to us in discordant waves, an eerie sort of echolocation plumbing the depths of what must have been a room of unrivaled immensity in this asylum. We waited, shoulders tensed, but heard no audible reply to his calls.
“What is this place?” I wondered aloud. “It's like a goddamn sports stadium underground.” I took a few steps forward. The floor was made of very smooth stone, but no matter how I squinted I couldn't make out the nearest wall. The scent of fresh earth hung heavily in the air. “What could they have kept in a place like this?”
Jake was silent. Staying close to me, he looked back towards the door. “Maybe we should go. She's not down here. Let's go back upstairs and see about leaving the basement.”
The room had been sealed off with a ludicrous amount of tape, which probably meant that this room housed a terrible danger of some kind. But I'd gone inside anyway, and I was determined to have a good look around. My previous hope, that this room might provide some exit to the outside world, died on the vine. But the damned impulse that'd gotten me into this mess in the first place, curiosity, waxed dominant nonetheless.
And then I saw it—a flash of my own light reflected back at me by a pane of what appeared to be glass.
I pointed it out to Jake and quickened my pace. “There, you see that? There's a window or something...” It soon became clear that we were looking at more than a mere window; it was a large pane of dense glass set into what looked like a small shed. As we drew nearer, the broad strokes of the thing were made clear. It was a cramped little room, fronted by a pane of what I took to be soundproof glass, and which could be accessed by a small door on the side. Standing in front of the window, I had a look within the space; there was a desk there, a single chair, a bit of clutter on the floor. “This little room looks like it was intentioned as an observation station,” I said.
“OK... to observe what?” asked Jake.
“Good question.” I walked over to the side door, tried the knob. It gave with a smooth click, and the two of us stepped quietly into the cozy little station. It reminded me somewhat of being at Dave Thackeray's studio. The desk and chair were in working order, relatively clean. On the desk—something I'd missed on my initial pass through the glass—was an olive green Remington typewriter straight out of the 1960's. On the floor, scattered pell-mell, were a number of books with titles like The Ganzfeld Enigma and Contemporary Parapsychology. I picked up the former, wiping dust from the cover, and flipped quickly though a few of its pages, which I found to be filled with several small bookmarks.
Jake had a seat in the chair, stretching out his tired legs, and toyed with the typewriter. Tapping a few keys, he was surprised to find the thing clicking and hammering against what looked to be a jammed bit of crinkled paper. Fiddling with the paper release, he yanked it from the carriage and smoothed it out. “What does this mean?” he asked, focusing on a small line of printed text with his flashlight. “They're coordinates, no?”
I glanced down at the page. It read simply, 46°08�
�N 86°40′W
“Seems that way. Where'd you find that?” I asked.
“It was left in the typewriter. Kind of jammed in there.”
“Whoever wrote it must have left it behind in a hurry.” I returned to the book, flipping through it once more and happening upon a few black and white pictures I couldn't help but consider unsettling. Photographs of subjects in gowns strapped down to tables with strange white caps placed over their eyes; pictures of people with strange helmets on. “Well, I don't want to jump the gun, but I think we may have just found the spot where Dr. Corvine handled some of his experiments,” I said.
“What kinds of experiments?” asked Jake.
“Judging by the pictures in this book, it looks like some sort of sensory deprivation thing.” I nodded to the glass. “Though, if you ask me, this big, dark room is overkill for something like that.” I set the book down and picked up the page listing geographical coordinates. If I was right, and this had been where Dr. Corvine had done his infamous work, then it stood to reason that this little message had been written by that same man. I tucked it into my pocket and exited the station.
“So, it's just a big, empty room?” Jake tried looking up all the way to the ceiling, but the light wouldn't reach. “What for? If you want to cut off someone's senses, why not blindfold 'em? Give them earplugs or something?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, looks to me like Dr. Corvine didn't like to do things half-way. Anyhow, let's beat it. We'll go back up those stairs and hopefully meet up with Terrence. And when we do, don't tell him we've been in here. OK?”
Jake nodded. “What was all of the tape for? On the door, I mean. Wasn't that supposed to mark some sort of problem area? Something dangerous? This room seems almost empty. Why all the tape?”
From the darkness to our backs there emerged a sharp, bloodcurdling scream.
My phone tumbled out of my grasp, the light going out as it bounced across the floor. Jake was so badly shaken that he stumbled. In the instant before my light had flickered off, I'd seen something in the corner of my eye—a fluttering that broke rank with the darkness.
Asylum: The Afterlife investigations #1 Page 17