by H G Lynch
Chester was a pale stain on the interminable blackness, giving off the faintest of luminescence, like one of those glow-in-the-dark, plastic skeletons I’d Blu-tacked to my bedroom walls back home. He looked more ghostly than usual, and it wasn’t really helping my nerves or the creepy feeling tingling down my back. “Cal, it’s dark in here,” he whispered.
I rolled my eyes, not sure he could actually see it. “Thanks, I hadn’t noticed. I thought I’d just gone blind,” I muttered sarcastically, but Chester just frowned, shaking his head. He looked…worried.
“No, I mean, it feels dark. Like there’s…” He stopped, his forehead creasing. His form flickered, and I caught my breath.
“Don’t leave,” I gasped, lunging forward as if I could grab onto him to make him stay. Then I felt stupid; what was I, five? I didn’t need him here just because it was dark. I was getting worked up over nothing. When did I become a scaredy-cat?
Chester’s eyes widened, glowing hazel, fixing on me, and I knew he could see me perfectly well in the dark. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said softly.
I nodded, folding my arms over my chest so I wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and touch him. Corporeal or not, I just wanted to feel him there somehow. Even a tingle. Anything to reassure me he wasn’t going to blink out and disappear on me again. I didn’t want to be left alone in the darkness.
“Good,” I whispered. Then I covered my irrational fear by adding, “’Cause you left me alone to deal with Wonder Boy after my session with Dr. Moore. That was sooo much fun. Do you know how awkward it is to have a conversation with a guy who can read your thoughts? It’s like, I might as well just say every little thing that passes through my head. Not that he’d hear it that way anyway.” I was rambling just to fill the silence, trying to distract myself from the inexplicable sense of…something…that had come over me. It was like a blanket of coldness, of wrongness, draped over me, cloaking me with the oppressing darkness.
“You spoke to him again? What did he say?” Chester asked, but he was moving away from me now, gliding toward the door. I expected him to do what I did, and look out the window, but instead he lust leaned through the door. Bending at the waist, his top half disappeared through the metal, and I shuddered at the visual reminder that my best friend – the person I had always relied on for comfort, that I was relying on now to keep me from freaking out for no good reason – was a damn ghost; he was a very good reason to freak out.
He leaned back in, turning to me with his eyebrows raised. “Well?”
I shrugged. “He didn’t say much. I asked him what his deal was, why he was in here, but he wouldn’t say.” I didn’t add that he’d asked me basically the same thing. I hadn’t told him anything he couldn’t have guessed – it was blatantly obvious that seeing the ghost of my dead best friend was what I was in for. More intriguing was why he could see Chester when nobody else could.
Ches grimaced and shook his head again, brown curls bouncing against his brows, and looked like he was about to say something. But then there was an ominous clicking sound that echoed through the tiny room. We both froze. There was another click, softer; it sounded like it came from the next room. Then another, further away. And another. Click, click, click. It wasn’t until the door gave a quiet whine that I realized the sound was the locks on the doors sliding open.
I looked at Chester with wide eyes, and he stared back, my own anxiety reflected in the look on his face. If this was some sort of electrical short-circuit and all the doors were opening, maybe it wasn’t confined to this floor. And if the patient rooms on the Fifth Floor started unlocking, there would be serious trouble. Like, blood-shed and screaming lunatics sort of trouble.
But… I turned to the door, feeling my heart galloping. Unlocked door, no guards in sight, pitch-darkness and soon-to-be chaos to cover my escape? It was too good a chance to pass up.
Chester read my intent on my face before I even started toward the door. “Callie, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said, concern tightening his jaw. I dug under my bed for my white slip-ons and slid my feet into them. I didn’t have a jumper or anything, and it was bound to be freezing outside, if I made it that far, but I’d deal with it. Cross that bridge when I came to it. Step one was getting to the front doors.
On my feet, I threw Ches an incredulous glance over my shoulder. “Honestly, I don’t really want to go creeping around this place in the dark either, but if the electrics are down, it’s going to be chaos in here. There is no way in hell I’m going to just sit in here when there’s a chance I could waltz right out the door without being caught.” I turned back around and curled my fingers around the edge of the door, pulling it open a few inches to peer out into the black hallway. Behind me, Chester sighed. A chill skittered up my spine as I swung the door slowly open far enough for me to slip through, and stepped into the corridor.
For a moment, I just stood there, uncertain, waiting for a guard to loom out of the darkness and toss me back in. Or for one of the other patients to come screaming at me and try to smother me with a teddy – odds were, if I’d noticed the doors were open, other patients had too. And even if I was only one actively seeking to escape, the others would no doubt take advantage of what little freedom they now had to indulge their curiosity.
But, all was still and quiet, so I pressed one hand against the wall and began walking cautiously, my ears on alert. It was a little dizzying to start with, walking in the dark with no visual clues to which direction was which or where I was. Luckily, I had the entire layout of every possible route to the front doors mapped out in my head – I had to do something with all my hours locked up in my room with no books or toys.
I counted my footsteps as I went, knowing it took twenty seven steps to reach the end of the hallway going right from my room, and then I’d be at the elevators – which I couldn’t use, even if the power wasn’t down, because it wouldn’t go to the lower floors unless you had a key card. That was okay, though, because seven steps to the left of the elevators there was a stairwell. It was usually alarmed, but I figured if I was lucky, the power for the alarm was on the same system as the lights, and it would be out too.
Sliding my hands along the cool metal of the elevator doors, I tiptoed left until the texture under my palms changed from metal to stone wall, to metal again. Bingo. I skimmed my fingertips down the door until I found the push bar, and took a deep breath. I bit my lip and pushed on the bar. It clicked down, and the door opened a crack, letting a draft of icy-cold air blow over my knuckles. I held my breath, counting to five, and when no alarm started screaming, and nobody came running to stop me, I relaxed.
One hand on the door, I turned to Chester with a grin. He was the only thing I could see – everything behind was just a solid wall of black. “Looks like I’m in luck tonight,” I murmured.
He didn’t look amused. His brows were pressed low over his eyes, and a muscle in his jaw was ticking. His hands were balled into fists at his sides. “Cal, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Sighing, I ignored him. I opened the stairwell door and stepped into the echoing coldness beyond.
And then the screaming started.
I leapt into the air, my heart nearly breaking out of my chest, and I slapped a hand over my mouth to stifle my own scream of surprise. For a second, I thought it was the door alarm going off, and panic rooted me to the spot as my mind raced through options; should I risk running for it? Should I go back to my room and pretend like I’d never left?
Then my brain caught up to my panic, and I realized it wasn’t the door alarm screaming. It was a person. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but it was loud and it sent chills tumbling down my spine, made my stomach curl up in fear. It was the kind of disturbed scream of a raving lunatic from one of the top floors, but it sounded so close. Maybe one of the Fifth Floor residents had also discovered the unlocked doors and unalarmed stairwell. The scream ended as abruptly as it had started, and I could have sworn I heard foots
teps echoing down from the stairs high above me.
I didn’t think; I ran.
** Casey **
When the lights went out, I panicked. In fact, I had an all-out freak-out, which, in my defence, you would too if you were deaf and locked in a psych hospital in a blackout. I had no idea what was going on, and I couldn’t see a damn thing, and it suddenly felt like the temperature had dropped into minus digits. All the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up, and a horrible chill slid down my spine. Heart pounding, I sat on my bed and blinked, stared into the darkness of my room, blinked again, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
But after a few minutes, I still couldn’t see my hand two inches from my face, and my palms had gone clammy with fear. It was so endlessly, unfathomably dark that I wondered for a moment if I’d gone blind too.
That was a terrifying thought and I slammed it down – I wasn’t even going there, I couldn’t, not if I wanted to stay sane – yeah, yeah, I’m in a mental hospital. Whatever. I knew I wasn’t crazy…but if the lights didn’t come back on soon, like really soon, then I probably would flip it.
After a few more moments, I accepted my eyes were as adjusted to the dark as they were going to get – which was to say, not at all – and I forced myself to get up off the bed. Sitting there wasn’t doing any good, I needed to know what was going on, I needed to find a nurse or someone…it was just that I had this sudden, terrible fear that something was in the room with me, and the second I stood up, it would lunge out from under the bed and grab my feet. I know, a stupid, childish fear. But I’d seen a lot of horror movies before I was locked up in this place, and I knew nothing good ever happened in a dark mental asylum.
Eventually, though, I told myself to quit being such a pussy and jumped to my feet, quickly skittering away from the bed, just in case. Putting my back against the wall, I stared into the blackness in the direction of the bed, waiting, tense…and nothing came crawling out to grab me.
I let out a breath and shook myself. Stop being an idiot, I snapped at myself, and turned to glance out the tiny, barred window. Since my room was near a corner of the building, all I could really see was a slice of the shadowy courtyard, and the thick charcoal clouds devouring the star-jewelled sky. But judging from the lack of light spilling onto the grass of the courtyard, I assumed all the lights in the hospital were out. Fabulous. At least I wasn’t blind.
That revelation helped ease my panic some, and I felt a cold knot uncoil inside my chest. My brain clicked into gear again, and I realized that if the lights were out, there was a chance that the electronic locks on the doors might be out too…
Sliding along the wall, I reached out until my fingers met the metal of the door, and I sucked in a hiss, yanking my fingers away – the metal was freezing, like someone had poured liquid nitrogen on it. I braced myself before touching the handle again, gritting my teeth at the sting of iciness on my fingers, and sure enough, the door swung open when I pulled.
But once I had the door open, I hovered there in the doorway, keeping my hands on the wall. The hallway was just as dark as my room, and that sensation of not being alone crept over me again, making me shiver. For a second, I wished desperately and fervently that I could hear. If I could hear, I’d know if there was something here with me…
I realized I’d just thought something, not someone, and swallowed. Mentally smacking myself, I took a deep breath and thought, Fuck it, just go. I could have said it aloud, but what would be the point? I didn’t talk these days, ever. It was weird to know I was talking, to feel the words leaving my mouth, but only hearing silence. Always the bloody silence.
Without giving myself the chance to chicken out, I stepped out of my room and started stumbling through the darkness toward where I knew the nurses’ station was, keeping one hand on the wall to guide me. I’d barely taken six steps when I felt a cold breath on the back of my neck, and jumped, whirling around. Shit, what the–
Casey!
The whisper trickled through my head, and my eyes widened as I stood there like an idiot, frozen to the spot in the pitch dark hallway.
Casey, help!
The voice came again, softer this time, and my heart slammed into my throat. Callie? I thought.
CASEY!!! The voice became a scream inside my skull, so loud I covered my ears instinctually, which, of course, didn’t do any good. Then the scream cut off abruptly, and I was plunged back into the interminable silence. For half a heartbeat, I almost wanted the screaming back.
Then my mind caught up, leaping over my moment of self-pity over my tragic deafness, and my throat closed up. Callie. Callie was in danger. Only she could have screamed like that inside my head. It occurred to me that I probably wasn’t the only one who’d discovered the doors were unlocked, and there were legitimate psychos in this place. If one of them got hold of Callie…
I felt that cold breath on my neck again, a chill of fear, and then a finger prodded me in the back – not just a metaphor of fear, but an actual, corporeal hand. I jumped half a foot in the air and probably would have screamed if I had been used to using my voice-box. Instead, I lost it silently and ran, hoping like hell I wouldn’t fall and break my neck in the darkness.
** Callie **
When I heard that terrifying scream echo down the stairwell, I didn’t think; I ran.
I hit the top step and stumbled, nearly doing a complete head-dive down the staircase when my foot suddenly descended through four inches of thin air I hadn’t expected. I grabbed for the railing and caught myself in time, but I barely paused. Chester called after me, but I didn’t dare glance back. My feet slapped the stairs like gunshots, sometimes slipping on the corners and bashing the back of my ankle, but I kept running.
The screaming started again. Every hair on my body stood on end, and I jumped. I didn’t know how far I was from the bottom of the set of stairs, but my legs were burning and I knew I needed to get down faster. The impact with the floor jarred my legs, and I stumbled, only staying upright by keeping my grasp on the railing. Then I swung around to the left and started down the next flight of stairs, taking them two at time until I thought I was halfway down, and then jumping again.
Again and again, I did it. Every impact sent fresh pain up my legs. The soles of my feet were prickling, they felt red-hot from slamming against the concrete repeatedly. The screaming had finally stopped, and I couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore, but somehow that was worse. That meant I had no idea where the freed lunatic was, and I kept expecting to be tackled from behind. And the spiralling staircase just seemed to keep going. It felt like I’d been running for hours. I was sure there couldn’t possibly be this many stairs. I’d only been on the Third Floor – I had to be fifty feet under the building by now.
But at last, I swung around the railing, expecting more stairs, and ran face-first into a door instead. With a yelp of pain, I stumbled back, gasping. My nose and forehead throbbed. I ignored the pain and scrambled blindly for the push bar on the door, my heart thundering in my ears. The second my fingers connected with the smooth metal, I shoved through the door and into what I really hoped was the lobby of the hospital.
I lunged forward into the darkness, all my step-counting and mental blueprints gone, burned away in my panic. I slammed into something at waist height, knocking me breathless, my arms sprawling forward over the edge of it. Sharp corners of stone dug into my stomach; it hurt like hell. Gagging, unable to force air into my lungs, I went to my knees. I’d run into the lobby reception desk, which at least meant I was in the right place.
“Callie! Are you okay?” Chester was suddenly kneeling beside me, and I nodded.
“I’m…fine,” I grunted breathlessly. I reached up to grab the edge of the desk and pulled myself to my feet, groaning. I couldn’t stand up quite straight, and I leaned on the desk for a minute, trying to calm myself down and get my bearings.
Chester just folded his arms angrily, glaring at me. “I told you this was a bad idea. What were you thinking, r
unning off like that? You’re all but blind in this darkness! You could have fallen down the stairs and broken your neck!”
“Did you hear that scream? Of course I ran,” I gasped. I tried to glare at him, but my eyes were watering a little from the pain. I was so going to have a bruise across my belly tomorrow.
He shuddered. “Yeah, I heard it. Which is exactly why I said in the first place, this is a bad idea.”
“Shut up,” I muttered. I glanced around. Now that my eyes had adjusted, the darkness wasn’t quite so endless and solid. There was a faint greyness about fifteen feet ahead – if I squinted, I could just make out the light coming through the glass front doors and reflecting off the white stone floor. No more than twenty steps, but the doors would be locked.
“Ches, come closer,” I commanded, turning and leaning over the reception desk. He frowned and took a couple of steps closer to me. His faint glow gave me enough light to make out the vague shapes of things on the other side of the desk. A computer, a stack of papers, a phone knocked off its cradle. Scooting flat onto my belly on the desk – ignoring the pain it caused – I ran my hands over the desk, searching.
“Callie, what are you doing?” Chester hissed. I just shook my head. My fingers brushed over pens, pencils, a paper coffee cup; none of which would be useful. Then, finally, the tip of my index finger found the shape of something small and warped and almost flat: a key. If I was lucky, the key to the front doors.
I snatched it up into my palm and slid off the desk, pulling down my t-shirt when it rode up. Then I turned and took a few tentative steps toward the doors. Logically, I knew there shouldn’t be anything between me and the exit except empty floor space, but after running into that desk, I was being careful. Gradually, I inched closer to the doors, counting my steps. Eight, nine, ten, eleven…