Chapter 20
For a few seconds, we both stand there, staring at each other, before he releases his grip on my hoodie so I can stumble backward a step.
The wind blows my hair around my face under my hood, and my eyes remain locked on the leering wolf-skull mask that has haunted me all season.
At my side, my fingers flex around my flashlight, which makes my stalker glance at the impromptu-weapon with a sigh.
“Don’t hit me with that again,” he warns. “You don’t want me to break it.”
“It’s a new one,” I breathe, unable to stop the words from coming out of my breath. “Your face broke my last one.” He shifts his weight at that, and I can’t tell if the tip of his head is from frustration or amusement, though I doubt it’s safe to rely on it being the second.
“No one’s on the fourth or fifth floor,” my stalker informs me slowly. “If you can evade me for an hour, I’ll go.”
“Why should I believe you?”
He scoffs. “Because I have no reason to lie to you, Scaredy Cat.”
“What about Arugula?”
“We’ll address that when we get there. You have to win this game first.”
A part of me wants to not run. A very stupid part of me wants to stride forward and rip off his mask, call his bluff, and demand answers.
But the other part of me is smarter. The sting of the cut on my jaw has my fingers itching to touch it, but I remain rooted in place as I suck in deep breaths of cold air.
“Can’t run if you don’t move,” I say slowly. “And you’d better give me some kind of head start.”
“You’re asking for a lot.” But he does move to the side to lean on the remains of the doorframe to take us back inside of the sanitarium. “You get thirty seconds, babe.”
“Should double that.” I move to walk past him, keeping as much space between us as possible. “For your cat sitter who—” My bravado fails and my words follow when he suddenly grabs my hoodie again, this time pulling me to a stop in the doorway.
He doesn’t say anything, just studies me through the black mesh eyes of the wolf mask. But just as I’m sure that he’s going to tell me he’s sick of my shit and cut off my finger, my stalker leans forward until the mask brushes my hair. “Forty-five, cat sitter,” he purrs in my ear. “Now run.”
Once he releases me, he doesn’t need to repeat himself. I bolt for the stairs, not looking back at him as I hurry down to the fourth floor.
I don’t know what to do.
With a glance down the staircase, I half-consider going down another floor to find Zack or the seance lady. Maybe Whiny Dave will be there, and he’s secretly a vigilante who can scare off my stalker. Surely he wouldn’t really hurt me…right?
But he doesn’t seem to have an issue with hurting other people, and I’d never be able to live with myself if he really did go down another floor and take out his frustration on another influencer here.
Realizing I’ve been standing still for a few seconds, I silently curse myself over my time-wasting indecision.
Without really giving it much more thought, I bolt out onto the fourth floor and bring up a mental map of it.
Unlike the third and second, there aren’t any surgical suites here.
Most of the rooms are now storage for furniture the owner moved out of the first floor and hallways for the group tours that filter through here all day.
“Okay…” I jog down the hallway and think, hoping I can figure something out before he appears and sees me running. That will be a clear hint as to where I am, and I don’t want a rematch to see if I can outrun him.
Somehow, I think it will end the same way it did at Mill House.
I duck into one of the rooms that leads out to the long balcony where the empty frames are the only things left of the windows that used to enclose the space for the tuberculosis patients to soak up the sun’s rays.
Yet again, I have no idea how the sun was supposed to cure anyone, but who am I to argue with long dead doctors?
When I find the adjoining room with the least amount of moonlight filling it up, I sidle up against the dark walls and move to the doorway facing the hallway I just came from. This isn’t my idea of a good hiding place, but I want to know where he is before I go anywhere else.
Waiting is torturous, when every single noise—real or imaginary—is turned into something worse in my head. My mind whispers that he’s close, that he’s somehow gotten around me in the puzzle of the sanitarium hallways and rooms, and he knows where I am.
He can’t, I promise myself silently. He didn’t see me. He doesn’t know I’m here.
It’s another ten seconds before he walks by, though he doesn’t seem hurried or like he’s particularly worried. I can’t help but wonder how he knows I didn’t go down to the third floor.
I wait until he passes, holding my breath, not moving a muscle. His steps are too quiet for me to really track, so I move to peek down the hallway, though I feel stupid sticking my head out.
Luckily, he’s already moving into one of the rooms a few doors down. One that I’m pretty sure doesn’t connect to the one I'm in. God, I wish he’d make some kind of noise so I can figure out when I can go or where he might be heading.
I need a hiding place, I think to myself.
Somewhere he won’t think to find me, or where he’s already looked.
Finally I get the courage to tiptoe back into the main hall of the fourth floor, and I dart across it to one of the storage rooms closer to the stairs.
He must have glanced in here already, at the very least. So he’d have no reason to come back.
But I want something more substantial to hide behind than relying on the shadows with the ever-shifting moonlight changing how it illuminates the rooms. Even this space is full of windows, though they’re all missing their glass, and I use the light from the sky outside to navigate around the piles of old furniture, files, and cabinets.
When my gaze falls on the two-body mortuary cabinet, I just stare at it.
No way. Absolutely not. There’s no way I want to wiggle into a place where dead bodies were once stored.
I’ve seen movies about this, and bad things happen to girls who hide in body cabinets.
Footsteps outside make me glance up, and I know I’m a sitting duck as the clouds shift so nothing at all is covering the moon. The light brightens, making everything the room stand out in stark relief, and my heart thumps painfully in my chest as the winding footsteps get closer.
Fuck it. I really don’t have a choice.
Quick and silent, I crawl into the bottom space of the cabinet, having to do so backwards so I can close the door that’s hanging open and almost off its hinges.
But by the time the steps outside are close enough that I know he’s just about to the doorway, I manage to pull the door shut without making a sound so I’m hidden in the sudden darkness of the body cabinet.
I hate it here, I think to myself, barely able to do more than cover my head with my arms. My heart races in my ears, making it hard to hear his steps, and I will it to calm the hell down so I can figure out what’s going on.
God, I can’t fucking hear him, I realize a beat later.
I can’t tell if he’s gone, or if he’s still in the room, though belatedly I consider staying here all night.
Or at least as long as I can stand, with the faded smell of sterile chemicals and something else in the cold, metal cabinet.
I’m not sure how long I can make myself—
Without warning, the door is ripped open and the drawer is yanked out, disorienting me with the way I’m slid across the floor. But I try to move too soon, prompting my wrists to bang against the top of the cabinet and pulling a pained yelp from my chest.
When I manage to flip over onto my back, I'm greeted with the view of the wolf-skull mask staring down at me.
“You’re bad at this,” my stalker informs me. “You’re supposed to be hiding, or running. Not napping in the body cabinet.”
Immediately I roll to my feet, stumbling a few steps to get away from them, even though he doesn’t seem too concerned with stopping me.
“Why the hell would you check there?!” I snarl, grabbing my flashlight off of a nearby overturned desk. “Who the hell hides in a body cabinet? Why would you even consider—”
“Because my little Scaredy Cat can’t help herself,” he purrs smoothly. He jerks his head toward the door. “Go on. Go run down the hallway and try to find somewhere else to hide.” God, I hate how encouraging he sounds, when we both know he’s just being condescending as hell.
As I edge by him, I have the awful urge to grab his mask and rip it off his face. I want so badly to just—
He lunges, and I jump backward as he chuckles under his breath. The knife flicks as he twists it in his hand. “I said run, Scaredy Cat.”
The urge to grab his mask disappears instantly, and I flee down the hallways with the sound of his echoing howl following me. “Fuck,” I whisper to myself, looking in different rooms and trying to figure out what to do. I turn through one doorway, and find myself in the stairwell.
I could go down.
I could scream and wail and shake my phone until it magically gets service. While there is Wi-Fi here, I chose not to pay the fee for it, since I’m not live streaming.
Which, apparently, was an exceptionally big mistake, seeing as I’m now being chased by a potential murderer who’s definitely a little unhinged.
I could just go down a floor.
But his laugh that rings down the corridor has me shivering, and I know he’s too close for me to dart back out into the hallway to look for somewhere else to hide, unless he’s feeling benevolent enough to give me another thirty seconds.
Somehow, I doubt he is.