Dex held up the camera and motioned down the hall. “Now we’ll just try each door and see what happens.”
I nodded and walked forward into the darkness, the lantern now swinging from my arm. The only sounds were our footsteps and my heart in my head. We stopped at the first door. It had no numbers on it. I paused before I tried the handle and looked at Dex and the camera.
“Where is everyone, anyway?” I asked him in nothing more than a whisper.
“What do you mean?” his voice automatically lowered to match mine.
“When I was downstairs. I heard people in their rooms. But I never saw any nurses. Do they really leave people alone like that? Is that normal?”
He shrugged. “It could be. If they operate by different hours here and they control those hours, this might be their bedtime. I’m sure Roundtree is flitting about in her bat-like way, but that’s probably it. The place I was in had over 100 patients but I’m sure one head nurse could handle them all when they are supposed to be sleeping.”
“But how can they sleep now?” It was so fucking early.
“Kiddo, I don’t know. We can ask the doctor on Thursday. But for now, we’re running out of time, OK. Just…try the door.”
I sighed and turned to it. I placed my hand on the handle and it shocked me with a giant bolt of static electricity that left me speechless for a few seconds and unable to move. It was like I had been poking around a live light bulb.
“Jesus Christ, that was some shock!” Dex exclaimed. “I could see that as clear as lightening. Are you OK?”
I nodded when I found my nerves again but was a bit iffy about touching the knob. I stepped back and said, “You try it.”
Dex grimaced in the low light but he stepped forward, hand extended. He placed it on the knob….
…and shook back and forth violently, his teeth chattering loudly with his spasms.
“Dex!” I yelled and came forward, unsure of whether I should touch him or not.
But he stopped abruptly and took his hand away from the door. “Just kidding.”
He smiled at me. Enraged, I punched him on the shoulder. Hard. “That wasn’t fucking funny, you asshole!”
“It was kind of funny,” he said, still smiling, though it was disappearing slowly.
I crossed my arms and shook my head. “No, it wasn’t. And you’re opening all the doors from now on.”
He pouted but his lips reversed when he realized how angry I was. How dare he just make light of that, considering everything that had been happening to me. After everything I had just told him. What a fucking chump.
“Sorry kiddo, I was just-”
“Just open the fucking door,” I said.
He nodded quickly and tried. The knob actually turned and the door opened with a tiny push from his shoulder.
We stood in the doorway and I brought the lantern light forward. At first we could only see the swirling dust catching in the beam, but after it settled and our eyes learned to look past it, we could see a narrow room comprised of a single bed, a sink with a cloudy mirror above it, an armoire, a door to either a bathroom or a closet, and a side table. The window was covered by a heavy shade that blocked out most of the light from outside.
“So this is what they look like on the inside,” I said while breathing out. “This is terrible. To live like this…”
Dex didn’t say anything. He pushed the door open wider, pushing in the lock on the knob as he did so, and stepped in. I wasn’t too eager to follow him. I stood where I was in the doorway.
“Was it like this for you?” I asked. I couldn’t help but relate everything we were going through to him. It was hard not to. We were in a mental hospital, who better to know what was going on than someone who had lived in one. For two whole years. It still boggled my mind.
“A bit,” he answered hesitantly. “A bit bigger. It was New York. And I did have some inheritance at the time. But the same idea.”
And there I was, feeling sorry for him again while seconds earlier he had acted like the biggest jerk in the world. I breathed out a puff of angry air, annoyed at my stupid feelings.
“What is it?” he asked, his head turning toward me in the dark.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Now what? Film the room? There’s not much in here. I’m not sure what you were hoping to find.”
“Can you come in and close the door?”
I could. But I didn’t want to. “Why?”
“Just…do it.”
I looked back at the empty, black hall behind me and wondered if something was watching us play it all out. I shivered. I wouldn’t be safe anywhere.
I stepped in the room, still careful not to make any excess noise, and slowly shut the door.
“OK,” I said.
“Turn off the lantern.”
“Are you serious?”
He walked over to the sink and placed the camera on the edge of it. Then he walked across to the bed, which only consisted of a moldy-looking mattress, and sat down. He patted the space beside him.
“Sit down and turn it off.”
I didn’t know what his plan was but I knew I didn’t like it. I still did what he said, though. Mainly because Dex had an uncanny ability of being right when things seemed overly wrong.
I sat beside him, immediately feeling the cold seep in through my pant bottoms. I shivered from the thought of rampant mold on my ass.
Dex took the lantern from me, turned it off and placed it on the floor. Then he put his arm around me and pressed me up against him, shoulder to shoulder.
“Um, what are you doing?” I asked suspiciously.
“Trying to comfort you.”
Was he? I couldn’t tell in the dark, in this small claustrophobic room on the abandoned floor of a mental hospital. There could be no comfort here.
“I’m OK, Dex,” I said and lifted his arm off me. He took it back and didn’t say anything. I could tell his attention was already somewhere else.
“What are we-”
“Shhhh,” he hissed.
I shut my mouth, stopped my breath, and listened. At first I couldn’t hear anything except the rain outside and the occasional blast of winter wind.
Then I heard it. Footsteps coming out from the hallway. Not like the ones I had heard earlier, the ones that belonged to the girl. These footsteps were slower, more discreet and even gaited.
I suddenly wanted Dex’s strong arm back around my shoulders.
“Wha-” I opened my mouth to speak again but he pressed his finger against my lips and held it there. Despite the circumstances and my rising fear, there was still a tiny part of me that was sorely tempted to put his finger in my mouth and suck on it.
We both listened, as still and quiet as statues. The footsteps came closer.
And closer.
Closer still.
Then they stopped, right outside the door. Dex took his finger away from my lips and put his arm back around my shoulder, holding me in such a way as if I was about to bolt. I wanted to, but if I went out the door, I’d run into whatever the hell was out there.
The door knob jiggled. The sound of it turning. Dex had locked it and now I knew why. The jiggling continued.
I nervously eyed the camera on the sink, which was filming the door and understood what Dex had done. But what would we do if the thing came inside?
The knob stopped rattling. It was followed by a few heavy knocks that filled the tiny room and made the window rattle. Then there was a scuffling sound, as if the person (creature?) was leaning against the door, trying to hear us.
Then it stopped. The footsteps picked up again and continued back down the hallway from where they came. We listened to them until they faded away into the night.
We waited for a good five minutes, breathing as quietly as possible. It felt like the longest five minutes of my life. Dex’s grip around my shoulder’s loosened and eventually he took his arm off me.
I leaned close to him, sensing his face wasn’t too far away, and whispered, “What the hell was that? Did you know that was going to happen?”
“Sort of. One of the things people had reported was that back in the day, a security guard had killed himself. Hung himself on this floor in one of the rooms. Apparently he had gotten too close to the patients and one in particular had been…mean. Played mind games with him. He killed himself, and afterward people reported him walking up and the down the halls, making sure everyone was in bed and asleep. I don’t think he means any harm but…I would have hated to see what happened if I hadn’t locked it.”
“But you heard that, right? The footsteps? You heard the doorknob turn?”
“Yes,” he said, sounding surprised, almost insulted. “I hope the camera got it too. That’s really all we need to make tonight worthwhile.”
The reason I had asked was that Dex hadn’t seen anything else this whole time. Sometimes I wondered if only I picked up on certain things. And maybe I did. But it was a relief to know what just happened was something shared by both of us.
“Can we go now?” I asked, ready to get the hell out of there, even though I didn’t feel like making it down three floors of dead security guard, mutilated bleeding girl, and one already suspicious doctor.
I felt him nod in the dark. “We’ve outstayed our welcome anyway.”
He got up and gathered the camera, turned on the lantern and we left the room. The hallway looked the same as it had earlier. Blissfully unoccupied.
He closed the door quietly behind us. I began to walk away.
“Hey wait,” he called out, reaching for my arm.
I stopped. He flicked a few switches on the camera until the infrared came on, the one that picked up heat sources. He aimed it at the door.
Through the viewfinder, I saw two large handprints lit up in a glowing pattern of yellow and red. They were fading fast.
“Are those yours?” I asked.
Dex reached with his hand forward and held it beside the handprint without touching it. The handprint was almost twice the size of Dex’s hands. They weren’t his and they most definitely were not mine.
“The security guard,” Dex whispered excitedly. “I think we’ve fucking got something here. Fuck G.J. Jermaine and his Douche Factory. We’ve got this.”
We both watched the camera screen until the colors on the handprint faded and the door looked normal again. That was some pretty awesome proof to have. That almost made everything tonight worthwhile.
Dex shut off the camera and looked at me. He was grinning. It lit up his face more than the lantern light did. He looked ridiculously manic and ridiculously handsome. I couldn’t help but smile back at him. Then I turned and headed down the hall before I got all mushy-eyed.
We made it down the hallway (Dex pausing briefly to collect the EVP he left recording), made it down the stairs and to the heavy front doors that led outside. This time Roundtree was at her post. She eyed us warily from her short seat.
“I hope you weren’t causing trouble up there. This place has no use for troublemakers,” she said.
“No way, ma’am. You’re probably the biggest troublemaker of them all, ain’t that right, sweetheart?” Dex said in his most sincere voice. He opened the door and we bustled out into the cold, wet evening before we could hear her response.