Once we all made it back to central station, I was surprised to see Tanya almost in tears. "What happened?" I asked.
"Something grabbed my fingers. I was sitting on a table with my hand like this—" she acted like she was leaning back on her hand "—and something grabbed my fingers. They were hanging off the table and something grabbed them." She shivered. "I think we need to stick to three in a group. I felt better when there was three of us together."
"That's fine. We can do three to a group," Alex said. "We can do the same groups as earlier, if that's okay with everyone."
"Yeah, that'll be better," Tanya said, twisting her hand around her fingers. "Let's go to the bathroom before we go back out, though," she said, motioning toward me.
"Where's it even at?" I asked, hoping it was close.
"There's one right around here," she said, crossing the large entryway. I turned my flashlight on and followed her around the corner. "My fingers were grabbed right up there, in that room on the right."
“Oh, I’ll make sure to stay out of that one, then.”
We proceeded to the dark bathroom, which was the first time I'd really wished there was electricity. Two flashlights simply didn't put out enough light, so when I entered my stall, I tried to hurry and use the bathroom as fast as I could. Mid pee, I heard Tanya squeal, which caused me to squeal right along with her.
"Sorry," she apologized. "There's a huge spider over here."
Hating spiders, I looked around my stall for any litter critters, and that's when my flashlight reflected off an eye looking at me through the crack of my stall door. When it blinked, I did more than squeal.
"Did you see it, too?" Tanya asked. "I should’ve stepped on it. It was huge, wasn't it?"
"No, someone's outside my stall!" I hurried and finished, pulling up my shorts in record speed, shining my light all around the cracks of my door. "I don't see it, anymore."
"Are you sure you saw someone?" she asked skeptically.
"Are you sure something grabbed your fingers?" I retorted.
Before she could answer, my flashlight went out, leaving nothing but the small sliver of light from her flashlight lighting up the floor next to my feet, but then that was gone. "Great," she complained. "My flashlight went out, too, and I can't see my hand in front of my face."
We both made our way out of the stalls and hurried toward the door, but it wouldn't open. "What the...?" I shook it, but it wouldn't budge.
Suddenly, a scream filled the bathroom, causing me to let go of the door and cover my ears. I felt something bump against me, knocking me into one of the broken sinks and onto the floor. As I turned around, unsure of where the door was, my blood ran cold with fear. I didn't know if something had Tanya and was about to get me or what was going on, so I scrambled to my right, trying to feel for the sink I'd just bumped into, but ended up grabbing one of the stall doors, instead. As gross as it was to be crawling around on the bathroom floor, at least it helped me know where I was.
I jumped up and turned around, yelling for Tanya as I held my hands out in front of me and tried to feel around for the door, but she didn't answer me. All I kept thinking about was the eyeball and who—or what—it belonged to, making me want to hyperventilate.
The door flew open, letting in beams of light from two flashlights, which looked like angelic lights from Heaven. I instinctively grabbed one of my rescuers and wrapped my arms around their neck, not caring who it was.
"Oh, mylanta! We were locked in," I cried.
I heard Erik laugh in my ear, which let me know he was the one I was holding tight against my chest. "The door probably sticks," he said, explaining it away.
"Tanya." I let go of Erik, following one of the light beams to the corner of the bathroom where Tanya was crouched on the floor. "Tanya? Are you okay?"
She shook her head. "No, I'm not." Erik went over to help her up. "Something grabbed me. I felt nails on my legs."
"Come on," Erik said as he helped her up off the floor. "Let's get out of here."
When I noticed the door had shut on us again, I almost panicked, but, to my surprise, it opened easily. "Well, it doesn't feel like it sticks to me," I pointed out to Erik. "It wouldn't budge a minute ago."
"Is that why you screamed?" Nick asked, laughing now that he knew we were okay, even though Tanya was still shaken up.
"I didn't scream. That was Tanya."
"I didn't scream," Tanya corrected me. "I thought you did."
"One of you had to," Nick said. "We heard it all the way out here. That's why we came to check on you."
"I didn't scream," I repeated.
"And neither did I," Tanya added.
"Then maybe we need to investigate the bathroom," Nick said.
"No, I think this whole place is active," Mark said as we rejoined him and Alex. "All of us have experienced something in different areas. We should get a lot of evidence tonight, no matter where we go."
"I think I want to go home," Tanya said. "I don't like being touched, let alone scratched." She lifted her leg to show three raised, red scratches at her ankle.
Alex grabbed a camera from the table and started taking pictures of the marks. "If you'd like, you can man the monitors with me while the group heads out again." He looked up at me and Nick. "Then we can rotate around, each of us taking a break to watch the cameras."
Everyone agreed, which prompted us to load up and head out again, the four of us staying together this time. We headed to the basement first, and on the way down, Nick thought it would be good to fill Mark in on some of the history, starting with the infamous Eleanor. I hated hearing all the gruesome details, again, but found myself listening, anyway.
"So there was an ax left laying around in a mental hospital?" Mark asked, sounding as shocked as I had been about her story.
"Yeah, and after she went on a rampage and killed half the patients on her floor, as well as the doctor and nurse, one of the male patients managed to wrestle it from her and used it to split her skull open. Luckily, he must've still had some of his sanity left, because they said he dropped the ax as soon as he killed her, crying like a baby."
"Did he get charged with her murder?" Mark asked.
"Nope. It was deemed self-defense. They stopped doing lobotomies shortly after that, though, saying they were an unpredictable and cruel form of treatment," Nick said.
We investigated the basement with, surprisingly, not much activity, just a few bumps and thumps, which could've been the building cooling down. However, once we made our way to the main floor, the activity kicked up a bit. Before heading upstairs, I decided to hang out with Tanya and watch the monitors, and after seeing what happened on the top floor, I was glad I did.
"Hey, what's that?" Tanya asked, pointing at the monitor in front of her.
I leaned over and saw the same form Nick and I had seen earlier. "Oh, my gosh. That's what we saw." On the big screen, I could actually make out the form of a person. "It looks like a woman."
You could tell they were wearing a gown, which their long hair hung across almost to their waist. I immediately thought of Eleanor, but tried to push the thought out of my head.
I picked up the walkie-talkie and called for Alex, who quickly answered back. “Go for Alex.”
"Alex, there appears to be a woman on camera four. She's standing by the door, the one near the stairs." I saw Nick on another camera as he stepped out into the hallway.
"Now it's gone," Tanya said.
I looked at where the form had been standing, and the doorway was empty again. "She's gone," I repeated to them. "I don't see her anymore."
Suddenly, a face filled the monitor, causing me to jump back like it could somehow come through the screen. Two large, white eyes with tiny pupils peered back at me like they could actually see me. It was the eye—the one from the bathroom. "Oh, my gosh, she's back," I told them, fear evident in my voice. "She's at camera four again." She grinned wickedly at me from the monitor and slowly shook her head before fading away, causing me to shake as I grabbed Tanya's arm and turned another flashlight on. "She heard me. She heard me through their walkies." The face had been distorted, slightly mist-like, but it was definitely a face... and we'd caught it all on camera.
Chills erupted across my skin and my legs felt like Jell-O. I no longer felt safe. It was one thing to investigate a haunted hospital, but it was another thing altogether to feel threatened, especially by something you couldn't kill, or even see, since it was already dead.
"Y'all need to come down here," I told them. "There's something up there with you guys. There's something up there!" I was almost hysterical, but tried my best to remain calm.
"We just heard laughter," Alex said. "Nick and Erik's going to check it out."
As soon as he said it, I saw them walk out of one of the rooms and into the hallway. "Oh, my gosh. What are they doing?"
They had only taken a few steps when Erik fell to his knees, grabbing his head. I was shocked, unsure what to do, not knowing what was going on. Nick was in front of him and obviously didn't see, since he kept walking slowly down the hall.
"Erik's down," I all but screamed through the walkie-talkie. "Check on Erik!"
I saw Nick turn around and shine his light on Erik, and when he did I thought I saw her, but it was only for a fraction of a second. Once he ran back to Erik, and Alex and Mark joined them, she was nowhere to be seen.
As they tended to Erik, I noticed that I was able to see better than I could a few minutes ago, everything starting to look a bit brighter. "Yes, the sun's coming up." I'd never been so happy to see the sunrise in all my life.
"Erik's okay," Alex said. "We're coming on down and gonna pack up."
"Ten-four," I replied as I turned to Tanya, relieved to be leaving. "That's the best thing I've heard all night. I'm so ready to get out of here." I started to unhook cables and roll them up. "To be honest, this may very well be my last investigation, period," I admitted. "I've seen, heard, and felt things tonight that I never want to see, hear, or feel again."
"I'm right there with you," Tanya agreed.
"I mean, it's one thing to research the paranormal, but this goes beyond that. I'll have nightmares of that face forever."
Little did I know, nightmares would be a welcome relief to the reality I would soon face. We thought leaving the sanatorium would be the end of it, the strange experiences over and another investigation down, but in fact, it was just the beginning.
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