Run & Hide

by Brett Calhoun

  “But that is only a theory…” a raspy voice muttered from behind the chair, “the philosophy of time and space…Yesss… Hutchinson and Brubaker, I know them well… We’ll have to work together on this one… Where’s… the curry…”

  He continued to ramble on like that as Lee and I traded quizzical glances. His voice definitely matched the voice of the person that called us many times throughout my time at the hospital. Had he been watching us all this time? I looked over at his desk and saw a wooden and gold placard with the nameRalph Meshakowski inscribed in it, however a hastily torn scrap of paper had been roughly pasted over it with the namePATRICK MESHAKOWSKIscrawled on it. Perhaps now I would finally get my answers.

  “Patrick?” I called out to the figure in the chair shakily, “Is that your name?”

  “Hmmm,” the raspy voice suddenly replied, “does this one speak to me? Is he a ghost? No no no no no. NO! He is no ghost. Ghosts aren’t real silly! Unless… ohhhh… But what if they are?”

  “He’s insane.” Lee mumbled to me.

  “The world is insane, peasant.” Patrick replied harshly, “Hundreds die every day! Floods! TORNADOES! Pesky bugs and their itchy bites! Pesky! Pesky! Pesky!”

  “Patrick, please listen to me.” I called out again, “Can you tell us what’s going on here?”

  “Only because you said please!” Patrick answered as he swiveled in his chair to face us, “I’m very busy, mind you. So I do not have time for games! Although… Ooh how I love THIS game!”

  I nearly gasped in horror at the sight of Patrick. He was extremely thin and gawky. His skin was like dried parchment. He had on a baggy set of gray slacks along with a black and purple striped shirt with a tattered gray vest on over it. His face was bird-like and covered in a white powdery substance. He had blood dribbling down his front and his eyes were so bloodshot I would’ve thought he had pinkeye. His hair was thinning drastically in the front while it was so long that it came down into a curly greasy mullet of sorts. His nose was long and hooked. He had a large evil looking grin on his face.

  “What is this place?” I asked the psycho, “How did we get here?”

  “Oh none of that matters now.” Patrick said as he looked down at a cockroach crawling across his desk, “The game has you now and all of you must die so that one may live.”

  “Look, do you know a way for us to get out of here?” I asked as I tried to ignore his last statement. “We just want to leave. That’s all.”

  “Leave?” Patrick looked at me skeptically as though I’d said something completely preposterous, “Why would you want to leave? Aren’t you having fun? IS MY HOSPITAL NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!?”

  “Patrick,” I said soothingly with my arms raised in feigned surrender, “we just want to go home.”

  “Perhaps…” Patrick replied through narrowed eyes, “Why should I trust you? You have played the game well, but some of the others have been BAD!”

  “Look ya son of a bitch!” Lee shouted in frustration, “Give us a way out here so we can leave this nuthouse!”

  Patrick stared at Lee with a glazed over expression for what seemed like five minutes. I was just about to say something when he began laughing hysterically. He hooted and hollered and slammed his powder-covered hands on the desk and began to gasp for air.

  “Okay!” Patrick said brightly, “You will need this!”

  Patrick seemingly pulled a large brass key from thin air and tossed it to me.

  “Only because I like ya.” He smiled nastily, “That key will open the front door. Now off with you! I have business to conduct! Yesss… Mr. Chairman, I would just like to say what a privilege it is to discuss the matter of apartheid with you! What ho! So scrumptious! Now as I was saying earlier about the zoning laws…yesss…”

  Patrick swiveled back to facing the TV monitors again. I briefly saw Selena walking down a hall in the seventh floor. At least she was alive. I couldn’t see Mark in any of the camera screens, but there were so many cameras in the hospital that the screens automatically flipped to different cameras every few seconds and I could barely keep track of anything that was going on. I heard a munching sound emanate from Patrick’s chair and nearly gagged at the thought of what the madman might be chewing on. I was surprised that he so freely gave us the key to the exit. I pocketed the brass key and turned to leave. Patrick began rambling to himself again and I saw no reason to continue to try to talk to him. He was quite insane.

  “Let’s go.” Lee said with a jerk of his head.

  I left Patrick with only one glance back. I wondered why he had become what he was. Part of me felt bad that he was trapped in an illusion, but then I remembered I was trapped in reality. The black lights remained on as we made our way back to the staircase. I hadn’t forgotten it was locked, but I figured Lee and I would make up a plan when we got there.

  I felt increasingly paranoid as we neared the waiting room. Everything had all been too easy. Patrick freely gave me the key to the front door of the hospital and we had made our way to him and back completely unhindered so far. I was scared and tired, but this was the first time that I was starting to become as paranoid as Lee had been. Was the key in my pocket really the key to the exit? Was this all some elaborate trap to kill Lee and I? If so, why go through all this trouble? None of it made any sense.

  Upon entering the waiting room I heard static coming from the television set we had come across earlier. As we rounded the corner of the waiting room I saw that the TV had been turned on. I saw that the VCR was still switched off.

  “Fuck this, pal.” Lee said impatiently, “I’m tired of playing these games. We have the key to get out of here, so let’s go. I’ll buy ya a damn TV when we make it out of this dump.”

  I nodded and turned to leave, but just as I turned the static went dead and a news report came on.

  “Good evening, this is channel 7 news and I’m Giselle Roberts.” An attractive blonde woman said into a microphone, “Tonight’s story is one of sadness and tragedy. Early this morning the home of local resident, Lee Marshall, went up in flames along with his wife and two children. Lee was not home at the time and law enforcement have begun investigating if foul play was involved. Mr. Marshall was taken into custody earlier today for questioning.”

  The screen cut briefly to a short home video of what looked exactly like the Lee I knew being led to a police car from a tavern, before the screen cut back to the reporter who now had the exact same picture Lee had had in his pocket when I first met him fixed in a corner of the screen.

  “Fire department officials have released the statement that the fire was caused by the Marshall’s stove being left on.” The reporter stated before pausing to listen to something in her earpiece before resuming, “This just in. Lee Marshall is now formally being held for the deaths of his family after pleading guilty to negligent manslaughter. According to his written confession Mr. Marshall was intoxicated and used the stove to light a cigarette before leaving to drink at a local bar. Channel 7 will follow this story as it develops.”

  The television set suddenly switched off. I immediately looked at Lee and saw him staring at the TV set with an expression I had never seen him have before. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was stony. His hands were shaking as he leaned over on one of the leather sofas. He suddenly vomited.

  “Lee?” I asked in a concerned tone, “Are you okay?”

  Lee remained silent for several seconds and continued to look down at his own bile. Tears fell from his face. He wiped his mouth and eyes with his right arm.

  “Y-You know how you s-said you wanted answers, pal?” Lee asked me rhetorically in a shaky voice, “This is the truth. We all DESERVE to be in this hell. Heck, maybe we already are in hell and we just don’t know it. I still have no memory of my family except for that picture I gave Barbara, but I can’t imagine being such a fucking terrible person that I left my entire family die because I wanted a fucking smoke! What kind of animal does that? Don’t you get it? We deserve to die. I
DESERVE TO DIE!”

  “Look, man, we all make mistakes.” I said trying to explain, “I don’t even know what I did, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just as bad. Even after all of that, do you think your family would want you to die here? “

  “My family doesn’t want anything anymore because they’re fucking dead, Mike.” Lee spat back.

  The siren suddenly went off and I remembered what Patrick told me on the phone before we came to Administration. This time there would be two. Lee and I had no chance of surviving if we were stuck on this floor with two of those hunter guys after us.

  “THEY’RE ON THE THIRD FLOOR!” Patrick’s voice suddenly shrieked and cackled from the loudspeakers throughout the hospital, “THEY’RE ON THE THIRD FLOOR! QUICK! KILL THEM! KILL THEM! HA HA HA HAAAAAA!”

  “Listen man, we can discuss this later.” I said as I tugged Lee’s shirt to snap him out of his depression, “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  “AAAAAAIIIIIEEEE!” A voice screamed from behind us.

  I whipped around and saw Patrick running at his whirling a switchblade in his hand! His eyes were filled with terrifying evil and his mouth was open wide and drooling. On instinct I flung both of my arms up to protect myself from the blade. The blade nicked my left arm before I grabbed his arm to prevent him from slashing further. Within seconds Patrick latched onto one of my arms with his foul teeth in an effort to get me to release him. I howled in agony but refused to let go.

  Lee must’ve finally snapped out of his stupor as he ran up to help me by grabbing the lunatic and attempting to pull him off me. I smashed my forehead into Patrick’s face and he finally let with a resounding grunt! Lee wrapped his arms around Patrick’s waist and hurled the maniac across the waiting room into a sofa. Patrick toppled over spitting and cursing random obscenities.

  “Fuck! Kill! Bitches, bitches, rape you all!” The psycho jabbered at everyone and no one.

  He rose up again and flung himself at Lee this time, knocking him over. He straddled him and tried to slash Lee in the face. Lee used one hand to hold off the knife-hand while the other grasped at Patrick’s face and attempted to jam a finger in one of his eye-sockets. I ran over and kicked Patrick in the mid-section knocking him off Lee. I was rewarded with a blind swipe with a switchblade that just barely caught me across the chest. I grimaced with pain and fell back against a wall.

  “Where is he?!” Lee shouted as he gasped for air and attempted to rise.

  I looked up and saw Patrick had fled back into the bowels of the third floor. Had we scared him off? I suddenly heard a high pitched giggle from behind Lee and I. I recognized the giggle and my heart practically dropped into my stomach at the sound of it. I slowly turned around and saw that Lee and I were standing no less than three meters away from the axe-man that killed Ricky and the scabbed hunter that had gutted Clark with a chainsaw.

  “RUN!” I shouted as I bolted through a hallway door.

  Lee was right behind me, but we could hear the chainsaw motor begin its terrifying song and the giggling didn’t stop. I was so very tired and hurt. My right arm was a mess of bits of glass and mangled teeth marks while my left was bleeding slightly from Patrick’s switchblade.

  I ran past Patrick’s drawings and ducked right into another branching area of the third floor. We approached a fork in the hall and on instinct I ran left while Lee ran right. Our pursuers made similar choices with Ricky’s killer pursuing Lee while Clark’s killer ran after me. They were so close I actually ducked a swipe from the chainsaw as I ran. As I ran I could hear the giggling echo through the halls still. I approached an upcoming room with a sign that saidMAINTENANCE. I ran through the door and slammed it shut behind me and somehow broke the door handle to slow down my pursuer. The hall I was in was crescent shaped and looked as though it led to where Lee had run.

  As I approached the door Lee burst through it and slammed the door behind him. I immediately came to his aid and shoved a nearby desk up against the door.

  “Aw fuck, we’re trapped!” Lee said with panic filled eyes as a fire-axe cut into the door we’d just blocked.

  I could hear a chainsaw hacking away at the door I’d come from. I looked around and found I had to grimly agree with Lee. There was no way out. It was over.

  “What do we do?” I asked Lee even though I knew there was no answer.

  Lee suddenly looked off in the distance for a few seconds and then looked me in the face.

  “There’s a locker over there big enough to fit one man.” Lee explained quickly as he pointed at a large wooden wall-locker. “They only want one of us still, I think. You hide in the locker and I’ll try to rush past them.”

  “That’s suicide!” I argued, “There’s no way you’ll make it past them!”

  “Maybe it is!” Lee shot back with tears in his eyes, “But I’m tired of running. I want to see my family. You’ve got to survive, pal. Now go! They’re almost through!”

  I opened my mouth to argue but Lee shoved me toward the locker. I heard the door at the other end of the hall begin to give away. I grit my teeth and ran to the wall locker. I opened it up and found it empty as I crawled in and closed the doors behind me. A small set of blinds the size of an index card was at the top of one of the doors. I pressed my eyes up against them and watched.

  The chainsaw hunter smashed through the remnants of his door and began to slowly make his way toward the middle of the hall where Lee now stood. To Lee’s left the axe man shattered his door and crawled over the desk that had blocked his path. They both immediately noticed Lee and slowly began to walk toward him. The axe man had stopped giggling, but the chainsaw’s motor continued to sing.

  “All right you mother fuckers!” Lee said as his body tensed for action, “I’m not afraid of you guys! You wanna go?! Okay then! Let’s go! FUCK YOU!”

  Lee yelled and ran at the axe man and attempted to throw a punch at the hunter’s bagged face but was kicked back with a strong boot from the axe man. Lee stumbled back and dropped to a knee and clutched his stomach. My friend looked up just in time to see the axe plough into the top of his head. I almost screamed but for some reason only silence came out of my gaping mouth. The scabbed hunter approached Lee’s lifeless body and, with one grindingly brutal swipe, cut Lee’s head clean off. The axe man shouldered his axe, with Lee’s head still stuck to the blade and walked away while the scabbed hunter attached a hook to Lee’s headless corpse and dragged it away. The death bell rang shrilly, leaving only a pool of blood and silence left to keep me company.

  I emerged from the locker unable to process the carnage. I walked over to the pool of Lee’s blood and dropped to my knees and wept.

  After what seemed like at least an hour my body somehow found a way to pick itself up. I still had the key to the exit of this place. I knew I could still make it out. I made my way back through Administration following Lee’s blood trail. Apparently Administration had no elevators as the trail went to the stairwell. I prayed to whatever gods I could think of that the door would still be unlocked. Fortune finally smiled on me when I turned the handle and saw the heavy door swing open.

  Chapter Nine: Game Over

  Upon reaching the stairwell I suddenly remembered Selena and Mark were still around. I couldn’t have cared less about what happened to Mark. In my opinion he was just as bad, if not worse, than the hunters, Patrick, and whatever lurked up on the thirteenth floor. Selena however was innocent, in my book, and I knew I couldn’t just leave her stranded in here. She would have no chance of surviving if I bailed on her. Once again I found myself at a crossroads. Do I search for Selena and try to escape with her, or do I leave her to her inevitable doom and save myself? The last shred of humanity I was still able to cling to won the battle with my conscience and I knew I’d need to help her.

  I remembered seeing Selena briefly on the seventh floor on one of Patrick’s monitors while in Administration. I wasn’t sure how Selena had survived this long and wasn’t even sure if she’d still be on th
e seventh floor, but I figured that would be a good place to start looking.

  Even though the seventh floor was only four floors above me, climbing those floors felt like scaling a mountain. Upon finally reaching the seventh floor I practically fell through the door with fatigue. Hot and humid air greeted me and I was quite happy at being able to assume that it was safe up here for now. I still had no intention of shouting for her, but I figured if Mark or someone else were up here the air would be colder.

  I staggered into the Physical Therapy room and looked around. The lights were all off. I flashed back to when I had hid in one of the changing booths to avoid the first hunter that came looking for us and felt like that had been years ago. Was Selena doing the same thing now? Was she hiding? Perhaps that was how she survived this long on her own.

  “Selena?” I called out quietly, “Are you in here?”

  Silence was the only thing that responded however. As I turned around to leave I suddenly heard a commotion behind me. I whipped around ready to fight tooth and nail, but saw Selena running up to me with tears in her eyes. She ran up to me and practically jumped into my arms.

  “I’m so happy to see you!” she said with her thick accent as she hugged me, “I thought you all had died and I was all that was left!”

  “Not yet,” I half-smiled and half-grimaced as she accidentally squeezed my right arm, “I’m all that’s left though.”

  “What about Clark and Lee?” She asked as she let go of me.