March 31, 2023 - April 2, 2023
Nervousness is a mouse hiding in the walls of a cat house. The tiny mouse knows it could stumble on a prize should it venture from its hole but hasn't moved in fear of its predator. Each of us stands here in such a situation, waiting for one of us to make the first move. After all, The Wolf was somewhere lurking about, and we had no idea where or how close he was as we stared past the counter separating the Treatment Center from the vast place of the Employee Ward.
"Who's first?" Blake asked.
"Why don't all three of us just go at the same time?" Kaylee countered.
Blake and I nodded in agreement. We then held hands and walked through the counter to the other side. We were now in the Employee Ward, The Wolf's domain, albeit at the very edge; nonetheless, my neck was sweating, and my hands were clammy.
Behind us were the treatment counters. In front was a hallway spiraling into many office spaces, separated by walls. Further down the hall was another room, and all I could see from that end were desks and cubicles. I was unable to tell how big or far that room stretched. Really, though, I hoped we never had to go that far.
"So the treatment is six-six-six," Blake repeated the phrase we told him earlier. "We're now in the Treatment Center. What now?"
"Maybe six-six-six is code for a type of medicine. Maybe a bottle of some sort," Kaylee added. "If we start going through some of these offices, we might just find more information on what we're looking for."
She led us to the first office on the left. Inside this space was a single desk and computer, both in good shape. The office across from us was just the opposite. My eyes wandered around, stopping at the portrait above the desk, at the empty corner left of the desk, and at the chair missing a backrest against the desk.
"This is such a chore." Blake rolled his eyes and leaned against the corner next to the desk. Kaylee opened the drawers full of standard office equipment; pencils, paper, notebooks, notepads, etc. "Not to mention, the longer we're here, the higher chance of us becoming wolf food."
"We can't just give up!" Kaylee protested in a whisper.
"She's right," I agreed.
Blake sighed and pushed off the wall. "I'll start with the opposite office. You two continue to search here."
As he swung his arms through the wall separating us from the treatment counters, a light bulb suddenly shined in my head. I pushed my left arm through the same wall and held up my right one to stop Blake.
"See that?"
"See what? To what am I seeing for?" Blake kidded.
Kaylee shrugged, with her curious eyes on me.
"Do what you were doing earlier," I instructed.
"What do you mean?"
"The leaning… on that wall." I pointed to the corner.
He did as I asked, and his back landed against the corner wall.
"I'm still confused," he said.
"Are you purposely keeping yourself from phasing through the wall?"
His eyes lit up. "No. No, I'm not." He pushed himself off the wall again. "Strange."
Using his right hand, he tried to push through; nothing. With his left, he easily phased through the wall separating us from the counters.
"Exactly my thoughts as well."
In accordance with this new revelation, Kaylee made her way to the computer and pressed down on the 'enter' key. The screen, covered in dust, turned on and asked for a password.
"It's like something won't let me pass through," Blake marveled, still looking at the wall.
Kaylee entered the numbers six-six-six into the computer, and it blinked red before shutting off. In seconds, the same wall, just over the desk, slid open, revealing a panel with two levers on it.
"This must open up the entrance to the tunnels that mad-person spoke of!" Kaylee shouted, jumping up and down, creaking the floorboards.
"The Wolf hears voices!" I heard the monster growl from far in the distance.
"Oph!" Kaylee stopped jumping and covered her mouth, eyes big like saucers.
"Quick! Pull down the other lever, Kaylee!"
Blake grabbed the first one and pulled down with all his might, blood vessels protruding from his neck. Kaylee followed, straining just as hard. Suddenly, the wall slid down, shaking the desk and computer.
"The Wolf hears prey!" Footsteps as loud as sledgehammers pounded towards us.
"Go, Troy! It's taking all my strength to keep this lever pulled down!" Blake shouted.
"But The Wolf!"
"Go! We'll run away as soon as you enter!"
I dashed through the opening and down some stairs. Behind me, the hidden door shut with such force that the tunnel shook. I prayed for my friends' safety; since they were so close to the edge of the Employee Ward, they should be able to escape and hide. As long as it wasn't his time to feed, he wouldn't bother them; at least I hoped.
As for me, I had to let the thoughts go and focus on my mission. I gulped and proceeded down the stairs before me. Pipes and wires on my right and left lined the walls. A few leaked dirty water onto the stairs and dripped down like small waterfalls until reaching the floor below. I put my foot into the pool of water at the bottom of the stairs and gazed forward, taking in the tunnel. Far in the distance, a light flickered, casting ominous red blinks of light throughout the tunnel and forcing shivers to ripple down my spine. I dragged my hand across the wall, letting loose dust and grime. Scattered pieces of ragged papers sat still on the cold floor, like forgotten memories. All signs of life had vanished from the tunnels leaving only a tone of mystery.
A heinous laugh echoed throughout the tunnel, rebounding off the crumpling walls, and I fell to the concrete floor in fear. With the sudden laugh gone, I rested my hand on the aging concrete and studied it somewhat expecting the cracks to have meaning. It took a moment, but I collected myself and moved on.
Each door within the tunnel was reinforced and had only a small window to gaze through. I arrived at the first and looked inside to see a cell. Perched on the end of a twin bed was an old lady rocking back and forth. In her gnarled hands was a figurine, and by the looks of it, no one was getting that away from her. The old woman turned with blood red lips and cheeks to face me and spoke with the voice of a petulant child.
"Finders keepers, losers weepers!"
She then turned back to the figurine and stroked it again. Harsh lines of blood and charcoal covered the walls, forming a bizarre web of overlapping pictures and writing that was painful to look at. Deciphering the images would probably be impossible, but the words were unmistakable. Drawn in thick slashes of rusty red and dusty black, they appeared over and over, perhaps a dozen times in all: "My husband wouldn't stop snoring."
I shivered and saw my breath as the temperature in the tunnel dropped. I then felt a warm liquid splash over my feet and into my shoes, swishing around my toes. I looked down and saw I was standing in a pool of dark red blood and blanched at the sight, quickly stepping out of the puddle, but blood had already soaked into the edge of my pants. I looked back up, and a floating candle, held by only an arm, highlighted a trail of blood leading down the tunnel. Suddenly, and with surprising clarity, I heard a strong male voice coming from that same direction.
"If you'd brought him to me sooner, we might've avoided this," the voice said.
I followed the bloody trail, with light footsteps, staying a few meters behind the candle. Another voice said something in response to the first, but I couldn't make out the words.
"Well, there's nothing to be done about it now," the same voice said, rather coldly. "Have him bite down on this."
The trail had led me down the unfamiliar tunnel, and I soon had to turn left. I quickened my pace slightly. What I heard next wasn't purely a scream; it wasn't purely a grunt, either. It was almost animalistic. It was feral. It had no emotion, aside from pure, unadulterated survival instinct.
The trail ended at the first door in this new part of the tunnel. It was open, and judging from the amount of light that leaked from its entrance, it seemed several lamps had been brought into the room and turned on. From the long shadows that flickered around nervously, it seemed several people were in the room as well. Not sure what to expect, I approached the room with caution and looked inside. It was a lab.
Three adults I didn't recognize stood at the edges of the room, staring at a doctor dressed in a lab coat. He wore a black beak-like mask similar to what the old plague doctors used, only it had a slightly more modern design. The others were pressed up against some shelves. Each of them held an oil lamp, and several more lamps were placed on the floor and on any available surface. The only thing left clear of lamps was the desk. Everything that had once been on the desk - the papers, pen, inkwell that now spilled its contents onto the red-splotched floor - had been shoved hastily to the ground, all to one side, as if someone had taken an arm and cleared it all off in a single motion.
It took great effort for me to look directly at the scene that played out on the desk next to him, with curiosity and horror battling themselves within me until I finally allowed my eyes to take in what was on the desk, then I couldn't look away.
Lying on the desk was a boy, no older than twelve. His right pant leg was shorn off at mid-thigh, and his clothes were stained with blood. Between his teeth was a thick piece of wood, and as the boy released another one of those crazed grunt-screams, I realized he was the one I'd heard earlier. However, the child's scream wasn't enough to hide the other, arguably worse sound that permeated the room: The bone-chilling, stomach-sickening sound of grating.
The doctor stood above the boy. His coat, which had once been white, was splattered with red, and its sleeves were pushed up to his elbows. In his hand, he held the wicked saw. I couldn't look away from the lean muscles of his exposed forearm as he pulled the saw back and forth across the boy's leg, the motion as steady as a metronome. His hair had been hastily tied, and it fell back into his face. I noticed a streak of red across his pale neck. But worst of all was the doctor's demeanor, impassive as he carried out his gruesome task. His eyes fixed on the bloody mess beneath him, the motion of his elbow was smooth, and he was unshaken.
I felt something warm trickling down my face and screamed as I realized it was a drop of blood falling down my eye, originating from the ceiling above me. At my sound, the three adults turned to look at me, all of them wearing the same anxiety-stricken expression.
The sawing stopped. The doctor looked up, looked at me. His eyes went wide in surprise? Shock? Panic?
He pointed in the vague direction of the door behind me and said in a quiet, shaking voice, "Go get your gloves please, nurse. And come help me."
The doctor's arm was covered in bright red gore, up to the elbow.
That was it for me. I turned and ran. I didn't know what else to do. I ran further in the tunnel, ignoring the rest of the doors, until I reached another tunnel, then turned right. I saw stairs, and I descended, phasing through the door at the bottom.
From the other side, I appeared through a bookshelf, which was opposite a well-preserved desk. The room was a study; a small one-person room.
The paint over the wall was thick, like the way a mother spreads butter over bread. The flakes were peeled at a variety of different depths, showing different sunbaked hues underneath. In this way, in its discrepancy, the old study became more intriguing and beautiful.
Unwilling to waste any more time in this nightmare-inducing place, I took a seat behind the desk and pulled open some drawers. Each pull drained my energy, and the feeling only worsened as I saw more and more of the drawers were empty. Nothing came of that.
I sighed and headed toward the only other door in the room. It was closed, reinforced with some crazy weird metal I'd never seen before. To the right of it was one of those high-tech keypads that required a code and eye scan to enter. For me, that didn't matter; I just phased through.
My heart exploded in my chest as my eyes caught sight of the room. In simple terms, it was an office stacked wall-to-wall full of desks and cubicles. The thing that got me was the decorations; it was people, lots of them. Dozens of skeletons were scattered, shattered, or worse all over the place: On top of desks; hanging on walls; over the walls of the cubicle; spread over the floors. Equipment, papers, pens, computers, everything a large workspace such as this would need was littered around the room, like a tornado had hit it.
Plastered in blood, likely written by a skeleton under it, was the words, "Experiment Failure." In his bony hands was a binder, marked with streaks of dried blood. I pulled it from his hand and carried it to the study in an effort to leave this place as soon as I could. As soon as I was inside the study, I put the binder on the desk, sat, and opened it. Out flew a piece of paper, crumpled and delicate. It read:
1 Month after Primer Test.
Patient: Albert Klingman, Z1
My brain is an extinguished fire, nothing more than white ash. At one time my mind burnt bright and I knew of happiness and light. Now my mind is a dark room, subsisting on faded burnt tinder of my past. Buried in these ashes exists nothing left to renew the spark. Instead, a new inferno draws near. It hungers to engulf me, change me to something else… something not human.
1 Month after Primer Test.
Patient: Mary Tudor, Z2
I know things they don't. I know things. Reality isn't static like people pretend, it shifts and turns. Logic is a circle, and time doesn't run in straight lines. They'll never make any progress until they figure that out. They're idiots… all of them. Forwards can only happen when the loop is fixed, when the energy has somewhere to flow. That's what eternity is. Deja vu isn't a brain malfunction, it's when you realize this isn't your first time in the loop, and those who gain an awareness of it have the chance to make new choices, to do things different and learn in a way others cannot. You aren't the first you, just like I'm not the first me.
That was all that was written on the loose piece of paper. To me, it didn't make much sense without context, so I set it aside and looked at the rest of what was in the binder. I saw just one more topic. Organized neatly, and attached in the binder by three-hole punch-outs, were about ten pieces of paper. The first page was just a cover page that read:
Top Secret. Classified Level 9
OoA
I turned the page over and began to read more. Much of it was redacted or covered by dried blood. From what I gathered, the first page was an overview and introduction to a classified project. At the top, it read, "Project Z--" only the rest of the title was redacted. As I read more and more, the project explored theories into life after death, hypothesizing on the afterlife. One of most substantial data presented was a study:
The man, under the stress of bioengineering and DNA manipulation, was able to recall with eerie accuracy what was going on around him after he had 'died' temporarily.
In this case, consciousness and awareness of a select few animals appeared to occur during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat.
Those were the only two snippets of text I could read fully. I turned the page, only to find the next eight pages pretty much completely unreadable. At the bottom, stamped in red, was the bold word, "Copy."
I flipped to the last page. It was the newest page in the booklet and had yet to be redacted heavily. I began to read:
--as we prepared the two subjects for the last and final test, their minds and bodies were too far gone to be described as human. I will update after the test…
Below that was a handwritten note:
--all medical staff are dead, all agents are dead, possibly whole asylum dead. He comes. I hear him. He comes... an invisible fire… a monster… our monster--
The hairs on my body stood tall like trees at those last words. I was horrified. But that wasn't the last piece of this story. Tucked away in the seams was a photo faced upside down. Dare I look? Curiosity's answer was yes.
I pulled out the photo and flipped it over. It was a lab, colored black and white, with a scientist at the front right, faced towards the camera. He was injecting a needle filled with thick fluid into a young goat hanging from the ceiling by a chain and long dead. To the left of the goat was a wild dog-like creature I'd never seen before. Chupacabra? No, that's a myth. Further down the left side of the picture was a pile of bats and toads on a steel table. A strange liquid was being collected from the pile of dead animals, and medical IV bags and tubing were attached to the poor dog-creature and goat. Various papers were thumbtacked to the wall next to the table, and further back in the photo were two pods similar to MRI machines, with two pairs of feet sticking out of the pods; distorted with lumps and bumps. The silhouettes of a male and female were hidden under blankets.
I couldn't stop staring as I gripped the photo with icy fingers, staring in silence. My mind was working overtime, tangled in conspiracy theories, questions, and imagery. I didn't know what to make of all this.
What was going on in this asylum before it suddenly closed back in the day? What was this monster they referred to? How did everyone die? What were these tunnels used for? So many questions, with no answers. It was frustrating. But in the end, it didn't matter. I was trapped. Blake and Kaylee were trapped. And we needed to find a way out. After all, that was why we risked being eaten, so I could be here. So I could gather information. And that was what I needed to do. I needed to search and read every single paper and file I could find.
⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕
Reality can often be disappointing, such as searching through everything and anything remotely relating to documentation, only to find not a scrap of information that could help us escape the asylum and move on. The only thing worse than this was the thought of revealing this news to Blake and Kaylee. Even though getting out of these tunnels would be miles easier than getting inside, I lingered around for a while. It took a lot of courage to finally make my way back to face my friends with this hope-shredding revelation that we might just very well be screwed.