The shenanigans continue...
CHAPTER 7
Sean watched the three flashlights at the end of the
connecting hallway turn off to the right and disappear. She stood with Fred and
Jennifer in the common area of the A Hall. They twitched nervously at every
sound that came from the darkness, their flashlights bobbing up and down over
pieces of broken furniture and the books and magazines that had been strewn
over the floor. Jennifer bent to pick up a volume entitled “The Book of Lies”
by Aleister Crowley and blew dust from the cover. “Not exactly average sitting
room reading material.” The cover jacket was black, and the front depicted a
dark yellow sun with an expressionless face drawn in the middle. She set the
book down on top of the only standing reading table near the bookcase and
looked at the other titles. “’The Necronomicon’ by H.R. Giger, Clive Barker and
Stephen King collections, books on occult practices in modern society…
Seriously: Why would they have all of these weird books here?” “I don’t know
but let’s get this over with,” Fred said, pointing towards the Northern half of
Hall A. “I keep feeling like someone is watching me and it’s creeping me all
the way out the door.”
They walked slowly, keeping within ten feet of each other at
all times. “Let’s do these two rooms first and move down the hall so he can’t
slip by us. Jennifer you stay here, and Fred you check out Room A6 over there.
I’ll search in A3 here and we’ll move up as a unit.” Fred saluted. “Yes sir!
How many clicks do you think before we encounter Charlie?” he laughed. Sean and
Jennifer stared at him, their glares piercing the twilight of the open hallway.
“Jeez, fine, just trying to lighten the dang mood a little. Jennifer, are you
going to be all right alone?” Jennifer nodded once and smiled. “Yeah, I’ll be
ok. Just keep talking to me about what you see so I don’t scare myself too
badly.” Sean took a deep breath and said, “All right, we ready?” She turned and
headed into the door of the room marked “A3” behind her. Paul! We’re coming to
get you!”
Sean walked carefully into room A3. The stench of mold and
the first stages of decay that permeated the building seemed stronger in here.
She held her shirt over her nose with one hand and wielded her flashlight like
a loaded gun with the other. In the far corner of the room there was a small
bed with a brass frame. It had both a mattress and a box spring, and fresh
looking white sheets were tucked neatly into hospital corners at its foot.
“Well that’s frickin’ weird.” “Is there anything in there?” Jennifer called
from the hallway. Sean turned to reply, “Paul isn’t, but there’s… something…” She
took a step towards the bed, flicking her flashlight to the bathroom door to make
sure Paul wasn’t waiting to scare her. Satisfied, she bent down and shone the
flashlight underneath the bed. In the thick layer of dust on the carpet
something was laid flat. “A sketchbook?” she reached into the blackness underneath
the bed carefully, keeping her flashlight trained on the bathroom door and
looking back every few seconds to check for an ambush. Her hand found purchase
on the brittle pad and she dragged it out from underneath. She stood and flipped
the top cover over the spine of the pad and her heart skipped a beat. “Oh,
wow.”
She stepped into the hallway and saw that Fred had already
re-joined Jennifer. Jennifer stared at the pad in Sean’s hands. “What the hell is
that?” Sean looked at them both for a moment before answering. “You guys, I’m
not really sure what this is. I wanted you to look at it before I jumped to any
conclusions. She turned the pad over, revealing the drawing on the first page.
It was a charcoal image of a crudely drawn person. It seemed hastily drawn,
with its body made mostly of chaotically jagged lines. The artist had poked a
pencil through the left side of the head and drawn a large eye on the page
underneath. “There are dozens of
these. The pad is practically filled with them. Fred was anything like this in
your room?” “No nothing creepy like that, although the room is in pretty
terrible shape. The carpet’s all slashed up and it looks like somebody punched
a bunch of holes in the walls.” “Let’s keep going,” Jennifer said, ”I want to
get out of here.” Sean and Fred nodded in approval and they marched on to the
next pair of darkened rooms.
On the other side of the building, Ann, Hannah, and Liz were
slowly making their way through Hall B room by room, their backs to each other
in a phalanx style bid to defend themselves against whatever might be in the
darkness of the rest home. It had been Ann’s idea: “I’m not letting that
butthole sneak up on me,” she had said. They had searched most of the Northern
end of the hall and had only one more room to search before doubling back to
check the rooms near B11. As they approached B4, the room furthest to the
northeast of the corridor, Liz stopped. Hannah and Ann bumped into her back.
“What? What is it?” asked Hannah. Liz shined her flashlight into the room
looking for possible hiding places. “I don’t know, I don’t want to go into this
room. I don’t know why. It’s worse than the other ones, I can’t put my finger
on it.” Ann grunted. “Then let’s turn and I’ll go in first. I’m not even scared
anymore, I’m just tired of this crap.” They shuffled their feet and Ann
positioned herself in front of their little triangle. “Let’s go. I’ll get the
bathroom, you guys check the closet. Ready? Go.” They fanned out into the room,
searching every area as quickly as possible. Ann ran into the bathroom,
ignoring the smell that emanated from within.
The white sliding closet doors had been pulled from their
tracks, and one lay in two pieces on the floor. The closet was empty save for a
yellowed pair of socks and dust. “Nothing in here!” Liz called towards the
bathroom. Ann ran out of the bathroom as quickly as she had run in, now holding
her nose shut with her hand. “Good Lord, it smells like eight people died in
there while taking a simultaneous poop. Hey, what’s that?” She shined her
flashlight on a wooden dresser that leaned against the far wall. “What, that
dresser?” Hannah asked as she and Sean also pointed their flashlights at the dust
covered dresser. “No, behind it. There’s something written on the wall behind
it. Hold my flashlight.”
She tossed her flashlight to Liz. They watched with a vague
sense of fear as she struggled to push the dresser along the moldy carpet, each
heave revealing more black writing on the white wall behind it. “Oh Jesus,” Hannah
said, her jaw agape. The wall was covered in small drawings of a stick figure
person. In between the crude drawings were dozens of words, repeating the
phrases “you cheated”, and “I’m sorry” over and over. In the middle of the
chaotic rambling was one clear statement, written in all capital letters: “BEHIND
YOU”.
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