The video showed us a room full of beds. A sleeping quarters. The thing about Crown Hill was that there wasn’t any such place. Not this big at least. A few beds for the overnight workers to rest was supplied. There was no room like this though. Not in the old Crown Hill at least. The video moved through the room not like someone operating a camera, but more like an omnipotent force that could be anywhere and everywhere at once. The beds all had people laying in them. More patients that I recognized. A figure was walking around them. A white sheet covering it. I could tell it wasn’t the one that was in the wheel chair. This one moved more human. Like the others that I found in the treatment room. The cloaked figure lifted up another white sheet and placed it over one of the people in the beds. It was then that the video changed to a close up of the person in the bed. They were awake. They had terrified eyes and were struggling to get up. Their ankles and wrists were tied down though. The white sheet was placed in a bundle on the patient’s chest. The man writhed around trying to get free. Then the sheet came alive. It slithered up his body towards his head. It wrenched his way into his mouth and down into his throat. The part of the sheet that was still hanging out of his mouth pulsed. It grew. It engulfed his whole body. All you could see now was the still outline of the man under the sheet. The ropes loosened on their own and rescinded back to where ever they had come from. Then the man rose. A man no more. At least not a living one. The video changed to window. A window big enough to get through. There was a fire escape visible outside of it. There really was a fire escape on the side of the building. Just like there was roof access from the north stairs. This room, this exit, wasn’t real. Yet there it was. The video focused on it. Zoomed in on it. It was bait. Bait that we had to take because there wasn’t any other way to go.
The lights came on. Steve didn’t waste any time. He took his pipe and walked up to the rope. He paced around it looking up. I saw where he had pulled the pipes from in the corners of the shower room and found one for myself. It was the first time I had been armed with any weapon since the flash light. Not that these steel pipes would do any good against the demons of this place. They could at least buy us time against the sheet covered ghouls wandering the halls though. I joined Steve at the rope.
“It’s a fucking joke. They are sticking it out there like a fat piece of steak for a starving man. It’s so obvious,” Steve said.
“The only joke is that we don’t really have any choice. You know we are either staying here and dying or going up there and probably dying. There’s no help coming to this place. If you haven’t seen enough to realize that then just take my word for it.”
“You act like you know what’s going on.”
“I know that there are things trying to kill us. More than just that thing in the wheelchair.”
Steve’s eyes turned wild. Almost feral. He wasn’t scared of the things under the sheets. Those were people he knew that had been turned into something awful. The thing in the wheel chair. The thing talking to us through the videos. He didn’t want to ever see that thing again.
“No. Hell no. I’m not letting that thing take me. I’m not going into that place.”
“What place?”
“Under the sheet man. Under that things sheet. It turned most of them into those things out there. But the first guy, it took him inside it. There’s a place under that sheet that’s worse than anything this place could conjure up. I saw it. I’m not going there.”
And with that, Steve was climbing. He had the pipe tucked down the back of his pants as he worked his way up the rope. I followed the same way. The rope went up a lot higher than I expected. My arms were starting to get tired when I heard him call out that he could see the top. He pulled himself out first. As I climbed out I was looking for him to help me up. He was busy though. He was in a defensive position. I got to my feet and saw what he was ready for.
We were in the room from the video. All of the people that had been in the beds were now standing. They were standing in between us and the fire escape.
“It’s right there. The way out of this damn place is right there.”
Steve pointed to the fire escape with his pipe.
“Let’s go,” Steve said.
Steve took point and went to the first of the ghouls. He swung the rod hard to take the thing out. The cracking sound that came from the head of the ghoul made me cringe. I had seen many horrible things in this place. But this violence felt more human. More real and less a nightmare. The ghoul hit the floor. Then the sheet started to rise. Not the ghoul’s body. Just the sheet. The sheet rose up and then shot up into the ceiling, pulling the body up off the ground and into the air. The ghoul was hanging by the sheet lodged into its throat. The other sheets began to do the same thing. They all shot up into the ceiling. Creating a group of horrible hangmen. Steve took a step back.
“Steve. I think we need to get back down that rope.”
“I think you’re right.”
We both started backing up. Then we heard the squeaking sound behind us. The sound of an old busted up wheelchair rolling along. I turned to see it. The thing in the wheelchair. It was coming from the other end of the room. The hole in the floor was between us and it.
“Steve. Run.”
We took off towards the hole at full speed. The things behind us began swinging wildly. They made loud gurgling sounds that sounded like people choking on their own vomit. The thing in the wheelchair kept moving towards the hole also. It was moving slow but was a lot closer. I didn’t know if both of us were going to make it. I was almost there. I dove for the hole and hit the ground right before it. I slid on the floor and into the hole. I grabbed the rope on my way down but burned my hands on it. The pain made me let go and I was falling. I could hear Steve falling above me. We weren’t falling to the shower room though. I saw a dark place below us. It looked like there was water. I splashed down into it. The foul taste of it was in my mouth. Steve hit the water soon after. We spit out the water together and tried to gather ourselves.
“What the hell!?” Steve yelled.
“Better than the shower room floor I guess.”
We both heard something above us.
“LOOK OUT!” I yelled.
Something came crashing down the hole above us and hit the water. It floated to the top. It was a TV. It turned on. Unplugged and in water, this TV had no regards for the rules of logic. I wasn’t surprised. We were at an odd angle but could still read the message on the amphibian television.
“Welcome To The Basement. Today On Our Show We Have A Very Special Guest Appearance.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Steve asked.
I knew what it meant. It was dark and wet and I could barely see anything. But I knew who was coming. The rotten smell was all around us.
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