Chapter 3

3

FINN

“ F inn. Finn .” Lea shakes me, eyes wide with worry. “Calm down. Just take in a deep breath.”

“He’s coming…I saw him—” I inhale through a rattling ribcage, eyes darting towards the open door. Why is it still open? We need to close it. Need to?—

“Let me go and check.” Levi walks out. My eyes close shut in horror, and if I try hard enough, I can imagine his cries in my mind. His blood smeared all across the walls…

“Finn.” Lea tilts my chin her way. I blink. “Look at me. Breathe in and breathe out. Again.”

I do as she says, but my eyes can’t stop tracing Levi’s flashlight.

“Where did you see this person?” He asks, facing the gardens. My heart thunders in my chest. “Or that way?”

“He was right there,” I whisper faintly. "By the window.”

“Well…it looks like your ghost has vanished.” I catch the humor in his voice.

“Abandoned, remember?” Lea rubs my upper arms. “You, out of all people, should know. How many times have you come out here to draw the place?”

“I’ve lost count.” I give her a shaky smile.

“Exactly. Now, let’s leave this dirty restroom and go down.” Lea squeezes my arm. “Get your camera out. Let’s nail this project.”

She’s right. Somehow, the nerves have gotten the better of me.

The Laura DiSanti massacre has been a passion of mine for a long time, perhaps because I live so close to where it happened. Maybe because she has been used as an example of a psychopath in the world of psychology.

I put the camera back in front of my glasses. “Alright, we’re heading down to the basement.” However, as we leave the restrooms, I can’t help but look over my shoulder toward the large windows.

There’s no one there.

Still, the vision won’t leave me alone. Blond hair and dark eyes. A guy around my age. Could he have been a squatter? A junkie?

“The basement is where the isolation rooms are, according to old newspaper clips. Although we don’t know for sure where Laura gave birth, it’s highly plausible that she was dragged down these stairs, down to that room of horror.” I film the stairs as we go down. The old wood creaks and the walls are dirty. “I wonder if she screamed. If she fought and cried and begged them to let her be with her baby.”

“Here we are,” Lea says when we reach the basement. She looks straight into the camera. “Our teacher, Professor Mathews, challenged us to look back and learn how psychology was applied in earlier times. Finn knew about this abandoned asylum and the killings that took place here, and we started digging.” She turns back, flashlight shining against the walls, revealing torn-down wallpaper and dirty, smeared floors filled with litter.

“Today is December sixteen,” I continue. “Seventy years ago, Laura DiSanti was released from the isolation room around this time. She was allegedly sent back to her room. We don’t know if she ever got there. What we do know is that she forged a weapon from a glass shard and went on a hunt to kill six people—four nurses and two other patients—before she took her own life.”

“Look,” Levi whispers.

It’s a crooked frame of all the inhabitants and nurses, and the photograph was taken at the front entrance. I let the camera linger while trying to gauge their expressions. “What would it be like to live here?” I ask myself and my future audience. “What would it be like to be sent here by someone you trusted, only to realize there was no way out?” The patients look serious, the nurses stern. “Let’s see if we can find Laura DiSanti…” I search through the group of strange faces. “There.” My finger halts on a petite woman with light hair and dark eyes. “Is this the face of a psychopath? Or was she simply broken after everything she has been through?”

“Who was the father of the baby anyway?” Levi asks.

“A mystery,” Lea answers for me. She points her chin toward the dark corridor ahead of us. “Come on, you two. We’re close, I feel it.”

“There. Fucking hell, I found it.” Levi shines his light further down the corridor. “The isolation room.”

My heart throbs as I follow behind. “We found it,” I mutter, mostly to calm my nerves. “Let’s see what kind of place Laura DiSanti was locked into for six months. Although official reports don’t confirm this, I personally think that she was the last person to be held here before the facility closed down.”

In front of me, reaching the threshold, Lea falters. “Fuck. Me.”

I first notice how low the ceilings are here compared to the rest of the building. I even need to bend a little, and I’m not overly tall at six feet. Now completely open, the door is thick and made of concrete with a little window with bars. Inside, the room can’t be much bigger than a storage room.

Our lights flood the room as we cram into the small space. There’s a bed, narrow and rumpled, and a simple sink.

“Look at the walls,” I choke out.

Words. They are everywhere. Accusations written in pointy, grotesque letters that scream at us from the dead.

“I think these words are written with blood,” I whisper. Laura DiSanti’s blood.

“ Welcome to hell ,” Levi reads. ‘ I hate you. ”

“ You made me crazy, ” Lea reads from the other side.

I flick the camera all over the room, capturing everything we see.

“ I will haunt you for this ,” Lea murmurs. She turns to face me, eyes wet with tears. “Fuck me. This is…”

“Let’s get out of here,” Levi says, ushering us out of the isolation room. “Come on. I think we’ve had enough.”

“Wait.”

“No, Lea, we need to leave.” Still, Levi, who’s already headed back for the stairs, halts.

“Oh, come on, babe. We’re so close,” Lea pleads. “Look at the time. It’s nearly eight. This is a chance in a lifetime. Come on, stay with me.”

Levi shakes his head. “Absolutely not. This place is sick, man. And I’ve had enough. Come on. Doc?”

“Don’t—” I swallow and look away. “Don’t call me that. My name is Finn.”

Levi huffs. “Whatever, dude. Let’s get our asses out of here.”

“Can we just…” Lea slowly shakes her head. “I don’t know. One hour? Aren’t you curious to be here at the exact time when it happened?”

I know what she means. But the idea of lingering in the asylum at that very moment has my body going cold and my eyes burning. This case was so much easier behind a computer. Though being inside this building at that exact moment and registering everything on camera…it would give me a good grade. I just fucking know it. Maybe I can even put it on YouTube and become famous.

“Finn?” Lea begs. “Please tell me you’re staying with me.”

I need this. And I hate that I do. “I’ll stay with you.”

Levi lets out a heavy sigh. “You’re both crazy, you know that? Well, you’re on your own now; I’m out of here.”

We watch him climb the stairs back up and listen to his retreating footsteps. The silence that follows is heavy.

Finally, I place the camera back in front of my glasses. “Okay. Lead the way.”

“Shall we try the other side?” Lea asks.

“Sounds good.” I follow her, shining my light as I continue filming. “As you can see, this project is not for the faint of heart,” I continue. “We’ve already lost three of our crew members. It really is scary to face such inhumane treatment.” I show broken pictures and the littered floor. We open doors and peek inside, revealing more decay.

Then…

“Listen,” Lea hisses, eyes widening. There’s a faint thrumming sound that slowly becomes stronger. It’s fucking unnerving. “What is that?” She whispers.

My heart stutters frantically, and my throat locks. I know what they are. “Footsteps.” My voice is strained with fear.

“Footsteps?” Lea frowns.

“Lea, I think…” I roll my lips to block out the whimper that tries to escape. “I think we’re not the only ones inside this building.”

“It’s the others,” she clips. “They’re messing with us. Fucking assholes.”

I wonder if Lea is just being stupid or if that’s her way of coping with anxiety.

Upstairs, the footsteps quicken until all we hear is a steady thrum.

Then, a shout.

I gasp. “Levi!”

Lea’s face is distorted in an expression I can’t place. Is it fear? Anger?

“We’ve got to move.” She grabs me by my sleeve, and we jog further down the corridor, away from the stairs.

What if whoever’s out there comes downstairs?

“Lea!” Levi calls out from upstairs. We freeze in our tracks. “Lea! Get the hell out of there!”

There’s another shout, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone being dragged away. Then, the hefty thwack when the front door falls shut.

What follows is a thick, heavy silence. Then…

“Lea.” Someone sings in a smooth, boyish voice. “Leeeaaaa…”

“Whoever that is will come downstairs,” I whisper. “This place was supposed to be empty.” We stagger through the hall, going further away from the stairs. “There’s got to be another way out.”

“I don’t remember the drawings by heart.” Lea runs ahead of me. “Can you hear anyone coming down?”

“No,” I say. “But I’m not going to stop and listen. Just keep going.”

“It’s them, I know it is,” Lea pants. “They’re fucking with us.”

We pass more doors, and I switch off the camera. Together, we jog until we reach the isolation room once more.

“Shit,” I pant. We walked in a circle. “Now what?”

“Now we’re stuck here like a bunch of fucking losers,” Lea whispers. Her breath is ragged.

I can’t help but let out a chuckle at those words. “Well, I’m used to being one, so that doesn’t scare me.”

I can feel Lea’s gaze on my face while we both take in the silence. There are no more footsteps, no more taunts. It almost feels like we have imagined it all, and we can just walk up the stairs and out through the front door.

Almost.

“Who gave you the permission to visit the asylum?” Lea asks.

“DSInvestments.”

She hums. “And they didn’t mention anything about the asylum not being…abandoned?”

“No.”

“Well, that says it all. I just wonder why they’d be fucking with us like that. I’m so disappointed in Jess.”

A red flash of light follows a soft click.

I frown. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know, but I suggest we go. It sucks, I know. But this place is fucking ominous.”

Sliding my hand against the wall, I flinch at the rumble. “Do you feel that? The wall is moving.”

We jump away, gawking as stone splits in two under a loud groan, revealing a smooth sliding door that opens with alarming speed.

My jaw hits the littered floor. “There’s another corridor,” I exclaim.

“This one’s definitely not on the architect’s drawings.” Lea peeks inside. “What do you think, Doc?” She turns over her shoulder. “Go in and find a way out, or go upstairs and face those terrifying footsteps?”

“Let’s—” I bite my lip. Everything inside me screams to go back up. To leave this place and hide. But Lea is right. Those footsteps scared the hell out of me. Fuck it. I’m not ready to give up. “Let me go first.” I take a few steps inside.

“Such a gentleman,” she taunts, but I flip her off and shine my light ahead of me instead.

My skin crawls, although the place looks surprisingly clean. “Wait up.” My light flickers over the weird rope adorning the wall railing. It sweeps the walls, and then I freeze.

“What do you see?” Lea asks. Her voice comes from far away as I stare in awe.

Him. Gingerly, I approach the painting on the wall. It’s a drawing: blond hair, brown eyes, a handsome smile.

“What the fuck?” I murmur. “This place is not abandoned, Lea.”

There’s a muffled scream, and I turn over my shoulder.

“Lea? Shit!”

The place where the door had been was replaced once more by stones in the blink of an eye.

I run back and start hitting the wall. “No, no, no, no. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”