Night Games Chapter 8

Shit's getting pretty real in Chapter 8, click Read More to find out how.

CHAPTER 8

      Hannah and Liz screamed, spinning to shine their flashlights on the bathroom door behind them. Liz dropped Ann’s flashlight in her panic. Ann ran to pick it up, cursing. “Guys. Guys! There’s nothing there! It’s just some crazy old bitch writing on the damn wall, calm down!” They stood there, panting, in the middle of the pitch black room. Suddenly their flashlights seemed less bright in the oppressive dark. “Let’s head back to B11, we’ve done the searching bit. He probably left knowing that we’d all go through this crazy bullshit without even checking to see if the table in front of the window had been moved. So let’s go see. If the table’s been moved, he’s at a Jack in the Box laughing his head off. If not, we’ll search the other rooms.” Liz nodded, being too shaken from the writing on the wall to speak. Hannah was all ready stepping towards the door with tears in her eyes. “Yeah, let’s go. Guys, I… I can’t take any more of this, I need to leave.” Ann lunged toward Hannah and hugged her tightly. “Soon. We’ll get out of here soon, promise. C’mon, let’s go.”

They walked down the moonlit hallway toward B11, flicking their flashlights at every shape they saw in the darkness. “I’m so sick of being here. Why did we think this was a good idea?” Ann asked. “I thought it sounded fun,” Hannah said, “and we haven’t been on a shoot as a big group yet so I figured it was worth any possible creepiness we’d have to deal with.” She stopped at the threshold of room B11, turned, and shrugged, and forced half of a smile. “I’m starting think I miscalculated on that one.” She turned back around and headed into the room. She paused mid-step. “… Paul?”

      Liz and Ann looked at each other wide-eyed before stepping into the room. In the far corner of the darkened room, near the broken window they had used to enter the building, Paul stood facing the corner. His hair and shirt were damp with sweat and his hands hung limply at his sides. At his feet was the lantern, the plastic guard now in pieces on the floor as if he had thrown it full force against the wall. Hannah shined her flashlight on a new dent in the drywall and realized that was exactly what had happened. “… Paul? Are you OK?” Liz stepped toward him slowly, sweat beading on her forehead. Her hands trembled with fear. Her mind raced, battling two conflicting ideas: if he was faking, she knew he would jump back and scare her. If he wasn’t… 

      Her shoes slid on the plastic pieces strewn about the concrete floor, making a soft grinding noise. “Paul, please,” she pleaded, her voice nearly choked with fear. Her shaking hand reached slowly toward his shoulder, fingers twitching in the dusty air. He wasn’t moving. She paused briefly, swallowed, and clamped her hand down on his shoulder. Paul shrieked loudly and spun with frightening speed, slapping away Sean’s hand with one hand and holding his balance against the wall with the other. He back away from her into the corner as far as his body would allow, bringing his arms up to his chest in a feeble protective gesture.

“Oh my God,” Liz whispered, her flashlight illuminating his face. He shied away from the light, bringing his arms up to block the flashlight’s beam. In the moment that she could see his face, she saw that his nose was bleeding. He stared at them through the crook of his elbow with his right eye, wide and red-rimmed. Tears had streamed down his face to make two large tracks down his shirt that ran nearly to his pants. His nosebleed had run down the middle of his shirt in a wide crimson swath. His left hand grasped his temple, his hair hanging limply over his fingers in sweat drenched curls. He slid down the wall with apparent exhaustion. As he hit the cold floor he wrapped his hands around his knees and hid his face. Liz kneeled, her fear forgotten in her sudden concern. “Paul, what happened to you?” Ann stood motionless near the doorway. “He… he has to be messing with us. We have fake blood, it can’t, I mean, what in the hell could have happened to him?!”

      Hannah stared, shaking her head slowly side to side. “He must be having some kind of break down. That story, the whole thing, maybe he just scared himself senseless?” Paul raised his head from his arms and looked at the middle distance with bloodshot eyes. “The game,” he whispered, “We weren’t playing the game. We cheated.” Fresh tears rolled down his cheeks. “He’s here. He’s here. He can’t leave. No one plays.” Ann turned at the sound of footsteps coming from the hallway. She shined her flashlight down the corridor to see Sean leading Fred and Jennifer. “We found Paul.” The flatness of Ann’s voice made Sean suddenly nervous. She turned into B11 and stopped, her eyebrows raised in confusion at the scene before her. “What the hell is this? Is he still dragging this joke out?” Liz turned to face Sean. “There’s something wrong with him. He’s been crying, and I think he’s been bleeding a lot.” 

      Paul slammed a fist into the wall behind him, smashing a hole into the rotting drywall. “You all have to play!” he screamed, he voice rising in a guttural crescendo. Snot dribbled down his chin onto the bare concrete. He slid further into the corner and turned to his side, curling up in the fetal position, and rocked back and forth. “You can’t leave,” he said, his voice suddenly emotionless, “No one can leave. You have to hide. You have to play.” He stopped rocking his body and was once again motionless in the glare of six weak flashlight beams. They watched him, hoping that he would tell them it was all a joke; that the Midnight Man wasn’t real. Instead he lay there breathing in short, ragged gasps. 

      “I know what’s happening,” Jennifer said. She stepped into the room and sat cross legged on the floor, her knees popping as she sat. “It’s the Midnight Man.” She sniffed, fighting back hysterical tears. “He is here, he is real, and we have to play his game if we want to escape this nightmare.”