“Okay, we really need to think this through.” I said, “Either we keep making our way to the main entrance or we look for another way out. These blood trails don’t look very inviting.”
Before Lee or I could utter another sound an unbelievably loud siren went off. Suddenly we were both on the ground clutching our ears in agony. I felt like my head was going to explode, but just as abruptly as the siren had come it went away.
Chapter Two: Behind the curtain
“What the hell was that?” Lee asked as he picked himself up from the ground.
Just as I was about to answer him I heard a pair of double doors slam open somewhere down the hall from where the blood trails led to. Lee and I immediately crouched down and kept quiet. As I was nearest to the corner of the hallway from where the sound originated I bent down and peeked around the corner.
What I saw was the thing of nightmares. A tall lanky man with grayish skin stood in front of the closing double doors that exited the building. An old burlap sack covered his head. It was covered in dark blood stains and one of the corners to the bag was ripped. Two crudely made eye-holes were visible. From where I was I could just make out the watery yellow and black eyes that peered hungrily from behind the sack. His arms were covered in cuts and scratches while the dirty tank top he wore looked about as good as the burlap sack on his head. His trousers were torn in many places and I could just make out what looked like meat-hooks hanging from a belt loop on his right side. He wore no shoes, but his trousers covered most of his feet so all I could really see were twisted grayish toes with yellow nails. The only clean thing on the man was the fire axe he was gripping in his left hand.
For the moment the masked man was just looking around, but I had a feeling he’d be moving around plenty soon. I wrenched my gaze from the monster and looked at Lee. The man was smart; he could tell just from the look on my face that there was nothing good down the end of that hall. We both slowly got up and began to make our way back to the stairs. With any luck we’d be able to lose this guy on one of the other floors and find another way out of this nightmare. We were almost at the stairs when suddenly the door to stairwell C opened up only a few meters from us. With nowhere to hide Lee and I just froze in panic.
“Man, what the fuck was that loud ass noise all about?” Said some kid, that looked to be no older than twenty, as he stepped out from the stairwell with an older looking man.
Just when the older man was about to reply he saw us and froze, but that wasn’t all. After looking at the scared looks on Lee’s and me, his eyes travelled beyond us. My heart dropped like limestone in an ocean, because I knew what he saw behind us.
“What the fuck is that!” The kid shouted as he pointed at the axe-man by the elevators.
I turned around slowly and saw the man looking at us. His head was tilted a little to the right and he was now holding the axe with both hands. He started giggling, but it was no giggling I could ever imagine. There was no innocence or emotion in it at all, just pure madness.
“MOVE!” I shouted.
I wrenched open the door to stairwell C and ran as fast as I could. I didn’t care about where I was going or who was going with me, I just wanted to put as much distance between myself and that maniac as possible. I could hear screaming as I practically flew up the stairs. I couldn’t be sure who the screams belonged to. Everything was echoed and magnified in the stairwell. It had become ridiculously cold as well. Before I knew it I saw a plastic sign with a white seven on it. I decided then might be a good time to get out of the stairwell. I stopped caring if Lee was behind me or not, I just wanted to live so badly.
I practically rammed the door open and found myself running in a hallway similar in appearance to the first floor. This floor was also labyrinthine in design but it was much warmer here than the first floor. It appeared to be a sports’ medicine/physical therapy area. I swung open a door and ran in without looking back. I found myself in the main physical therapy area where people would do all sorts of exercises and undergo various treatments. There was a long line of changing areas in the back of the room lined up against the wall. They were little more than booths with baby blue curtains covering the fronts. I ran straight ahead and picked the closest one. I ran behind the curtain and yanked it closed behind me.
I almost screamed when I turned around and saw what was in the booth with me. In the booth was a large countertop where patients could put their belongings and clothes while they changed. On top of my counter was a human head. It looked quite old too. The smell was terrible. Apparently it belonged to a woman, but that was all I could tell considering the amount of sheer damage that had been done to it. The hair was long and what I assumed used to be blonde. A small coagulated trickle of blood ran from the center of the hairline onto the nose. The eyes had been mushed in leaving large amounts of black blood flowing from the sockets onto the cheeks down to the decapitated neck. Whatever had severed her head was definitely no fire-axe though. It was hardly a clean cut.
Right after finishing examining the skull I heard a door slam open out in the hallway. Suddenly the air became frigid again, just like the first floor. I could hear some type of scraping noise coming closer and closer to the room I was in. I heard the soft click of the door handle move and heard the door swing slowly and creakily open. Soft footsteps followed along with the scraping sound. I silently got down on my hands and knees to look under the curtain to see who it was. I hoped beyond all hope that it was Lee. I wished so bad that it was Lee or anybody. Right away all my hopes were crushed. It was him. The scraping noise was him dragging his axe along the ground while he walked. I could hear him breathing. It was low and heavy. He walked around the large room for a few moments and then stopped in the center of the room. Suddenly he turned in my direction and took a few steps toward the changing booths. He stopped again and then did something I couldn’t understand for a second. He got down on his hands and knees. I silently hopped up on the counter next to the severed head just in time. My right hand was now covered in the old blood from the severed head. I felt like throwing up.
By the sounds of things the man got up back on his feet, but there was no way I was going to drop back down onto the floor again while he was out there. I heard his footsteps move away from me. Suddenly the curtains to the booth farthest to my right were yanked open viciously. A few more footsteps and then the next curtain was yanked open. He yanked the next two as well and then moved to the booth directly to my right. This time he didn’t yank the curtain open. I heard a violent grunt and suddenly heard his axe slice through the curtain and smash into countertop of the booth. I heard a slightly annoyed growl and then heard him tug the axe free from the countertop. I heard a few more footsteps and then saw his toes behind the curtain to my booth. I was so close to him I could smell him. The severed head alone was pungent, but the monster reeked of death and decay. His feet’s skin looked like it was made of rubber. Slowly a hand reached up and grabbed the side of the curtain. I could see his hairy knuckles. His hand was missing two fingernails, while the rest were just as yellow and nasty as his toenails.
I prepared myself for the worst. I would not be resigned to my fate. I didn’t believe in fate and I knew it was up to me if I wanted to survive. I knew that when he yanked open this curtain I would spring out from the countertop and slug him in the face. Hopefully that would catch him by surprise. Maybe I’d get lucky and he’d drop his axe. Just as he was about to wrench the curtain open he stopped and let go. At first I couldn’t understand my luck, but then I heard a whimpering voice out in the hall.
“Helloooo! Is anyone out there?”
It was the 20 year old kid.
“I’m really hurt. I need help! There’s some lunatic after me! I just wanna go home!”
From where I was sitting on the countertop I could see that the axe man had now turned away from me and I could hear him walking away. I remained silent and didn’t move. I heard the door to the exercise room open and then close.
“Hello? Hello?” I heard the kid call.
I wanted to run out and scream for him to run, but I felt paralyzed with horror. After a few seconds I finally worked up the courage to withdraw from the changing booth. I began to walk to the door. Maybe, if I was lucky, I could catch the kid’s attention and we could make it to a stairwell and hide on another floor.
“What the!? NOOO- Urgk…”
I heard the sound of something heavy colliding with something wet and soft. Once again a noise rang out suddenly through the entire hospital, similar to the siren, except this time it was a low ring repeated seven times. The temperature on my floor abruptly shot up again to become balmy and warm. After the ringing stopped, I cracked open the door and peered down the hall. The kid was being dragged down the hall with the fire axe stuck in his collarbone. A large metal hook was embedded in his left calf, which the axe man used to drag his victim along the floor around the corner. As he passed the stairs I decided to follow, albeit from a considerable distance.
I crept along the hallway until I reached the corner the man had turned. I got low and peered around again and saw that he was making his way to the elevator with his prize in tow. Upon reaching the elevator the man sunk a gray claw into his trouser pocket and fished out a set of keys with a silver tag on the ring. He inserted one of the keys into a lock under the call buttons and turned it. Suddenly the elevators sprang to life. He pressed the call button and stood motionlessly while he waited. As the elevator rang to notify that it had reached its called floor the man crookedly turned his head and looked directly at me. I was practically frozen in place. For what seemed like an eternity we looked at each other until the monster slowly and simply nodded at me and then proceeded into the elevator with his cargo. I walked over to the elevator to see which floor the man was going to. I wasn’t surprised at all to see that he had taken it to the first floor. After a few seconds the elevators switched off again. I’m assuming he used his keys to switch the elevators off once he got where he needed to be so that no one else would be able to use them.
As terrifying as it was, it was also very puzzling to me. Why did he need the body? Some sick fantasy, or perhaps another purpose? Most importantly, why did he not pursue me when he saw me? He could’ve easily pulled the axe from the kid’s body and given chase. I was so tired and on edge that he probably would’ve been able to catch me too. None of it made sense.
While I pondered these questions I suddenly heard a phone ringing from the exercise room. I hadn’t even seen a phone when I was in there, but then again I was in quite a hurry when I was last in there. I walked back to the exercise phone and found a small tan telephone sitting neatly on a desk.
“Hello?” I said.
Just as last time when I had answered the phone all I heard at first was heavy breathing for a few seconds.
“One down, seven to go!” The same raspy voice from before said, “Your friend is on the fifth floor…”
The phone immediately went dead just as before. I put the phone back on the receiver and contemplated the voice’s words. Obviously my “friend” was probably Lee. I wasn’t quite sure how this person with the raspy voice knew that, but it had been helpful before by hinting at us to check our pockets. But what did it mean by “seven to go”? Besides Lee, that older man, the 20 year old kid, and myself, were there four other people in this building somewhere? It was very possible, I suppose. Considering just how massive the hospital was it wouldn’t be a shock at all to discover that there was a whole crowd of people in this building. I figured I’d try and figure out the answers once I caught up with Lee.
I made my way down stairwell D and entered the fifth floor. The fifth floor was dedicated to Family Practice. It was the kind of place you would go to get a diagnosis or treatment for a minor injury or illness. My first thought was to call out to Lee, but then the memory of the kid hit me like a ton of bricks and I decided it would be safer if I just looked around. It was all very strange. The entire floor was a series of doctor’s offices, waiting rooms, and nurse stations. While walking through one of the waiting rooms I saw an old newspaper clipping lying neatly on a seat. I wouldn’t have paid it any mind, but the heading of the article was about a hospital.
AFTER MULTIPLE MURDERS, HOSPITAL CLOSES DOWN
By: Jim Nicholson
St. Thomas More’s Grand Hospital used to be a beacon of hope for those that worked in the medical field, but now it is nothing more than a bloated tower of nightmares and sadness. Originally built in 1969, St. Thomas’s was designed to be the perfect medical facility in the United States of America. Towering at 13 floors with three basement levels it was quite a sight to behold just from the outside alone. It sported an Olympic sized swimming pool, restaurant quality cafeteria, and contained the best qualities a hospital can have for the infirmed. In fact when it was first opened many ex-patients would call it “St. Thomas More’s Grand Hotel”. Unfortunately the grandness did not last long. In 1975 a woman drowned her new-born baby in a sink on the 13th floor and in 1979 a physician that had been working for St. Thomas’s assaulted and brutally murdered one of his nurses with a scalpel. Then, just two years ago, supply clerk, Bradley Stenseth met an untimely demise at the hands of an unknown assailant on the first basement floor. This terrible tragedy greatly shook many of the workers at the hospital and caused over 25% of its staff to leave it for new jobs in medical facilities with lighter histories. Despite the many losses of personnel St. Thomas’s marched on until two weeks ago when it was discovered that psychiatrist and physician Dr. Marcus Sawyer was experimenting on his patients with radical and toxic drugs and then performing unwarranted autopsies on them to study the effects of his “prescriptions”. Dr. Sawyer’s murderous spree went on for almost three years until one of his patients moved to another state where their new doctor discovered the harmful narcotics they were prescribed to take. It is estimated that Dr. Sawyer murdered a total of 17 people. Almost immediately after the scandal went public, the proprietor of St. Thomas’s, Ralph Meshakowski, came forward and announced the closure of his hospital. It is estimated that within six months the St. Thomas More’s Grand Hospital will be completely vacant and more than likely demolished. It is truly unfortunate that something that was designed to represent so much good in this fair country came to such a tragic end.
The date of the article stated that it was written in 1985. I folded the article and put it in my pocket along with the one dollar bill I still had. I remembered reading Nurse Rita’s journal and how she had mentioned a Dr. Sawyer in it at least once. Was that the same Dr. Sawyer? I wondered if she had made it out of the hospital okay, and I was curious how she must’ve felt when she came across this article wherever she was. What made no sense to me though, was how the article mentioned that the hospital would be completely vacant within six months, however it looked like nothing had even been removed so far and in fact the hospital itself looked like it was up and running for the most part. I wish I knew what the date was. Perhaps Lee would be able to give me some answers. I continued my search for Lee; however the thoughts of Dr. Sawyer’s patients never strayed far from my mind. What had befallen the mad doctor?
After around five minutes of walking around I heard hushed voices coming from an office near stairwell B. I took my time as I wasn’t sure what I whether the voices belonged to possible friends or nightmarish enemies. As I got closer to the office I could hear three voices. Two voices seemed to belong to women while the last one was a man’s. After the incident with the axe man, I wanted to make sure it was safe so I decided it would be best just to listen in on their conversation first before trying to talk to them.
“Listen, we gotta come up with a game-plan here.” The man was saying. “We’ve been cooped up on this floor for hours. We can’t just stay here forever.”
“You’re right, but what about those screams we heard earlier?” One of the women asked.
“Yeah, and what about that man on the phone that told us about ‘seven to go’?” Th
e other woman chimed in.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here anymore than you do.” The man replied, “I barely remember my own name, better yet where we are or what’s goin’ on, but stayin’ around here is definitely no good.”
I knew approaching these three would have to be carefully done. They seemed friendly enough from what I could hear. It sounded like they were in the same situation as me too. I figured opening the door and walking right in would be a bad move as they would probably attack me out of fear and shock. I decided I would knock and see where that got me.
I knocked on the office door and immediately the voices hushed.
“Hello? My name’s Michael.” I said clearly through the door, “I’m friendly and I’m unarmed. I think I’m in the same situation as you guys. Is it okay for me to come in so we can talk?”
My request was met only by further silence. I was worried that they might think I was trying to trick them so I remained outside.
“Look, I have no memory of…well anything before coming here.” I explained, “I woke up in a small room with a man named Lee. We were trying to escape this place when we were attacked. If you guys don’t want to talk or want me to go away that’s fine, but could you at least tell me if you’ve seen Lee? He’s a heavy-set kinda guy and-“
Before I could finish the door was opened a crack and I saw that a large tan man with slicked back hair was looking me up and down. Apparently satisfied he opened the door and beckoned me in. The doctor’s office was small with four people so I leaned up against the examination table while the three others stood on the other side of the room looking at me. The two women had scared looks in their eyes, however the man looked at me like a coach would size up a potential fighter. The man was wearing a well-tailored black suit with a light blue undershirt and black shoes. His shirt was opened at the top three buttons to show off his chest hair and a gold cross hanging from a necklace.
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