Day 111
Adam
In North Carolina, I finally convince her to do some more thorough exploration.
“Ghost hunting was not on the bucket list,” Eve insists, throwing looks over her shoulder as we enter another silent building.
“It’s a little early for ghosts,” I point out. “I thought they only come out at nighttime.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” she argues, “but if I did, they would definitely be here.”
She said that about the abandoned school and the silent hill house, too, but I have to admit that this… facility, whatever it used to be, is definitely at the top of the haunted list.
“Remind me why we’re here again?” Her voice gets more distressed the further we wander into the eerie silence. “I thought we’re supposed to be having fun.”
“This is fun.” I shrug, but her glare makes me grin. “Come on.” I tug her along. “You never got scared for fun? Horror movies? Video games?”
“That’s different—” she starts when a loud BANG disrupts her words. She yelps and clings to me, and I try really hard not to laugh.
“It was just a door slamming somewhere,” I assure her. “Don’t worry. There’s nothing around to hurt us.”
“A door that just took years off my life,” she lets out, struggling to catch her breath. “Fuck.”
“Come on, let’s go find more creepy things.” I continue down the hall and she has no choice but to follow. “This place is too small to be a hospital, right?” I murmur just to fill the silence and hopefully, give her mind something to focus on.
“Not a hospital.” She visibly gulps when we pass another room with nothing but a treatment bed in the dead center of it. “If we find humans in tubes here, I swear to god I’m—”
“It doesn’t look like a lab,” I observe, peering into another room. This one is also empty, but there’s a neglected wheelchair in the corner.
“Is that chair moving?” she whispers, horrified.
“It’s not. Maybe just the wind again.” I wrap a hand around her shoulders. “Come on, one more floor and then we’ll call it a day. I’m getting hungry, anyway.”
“How the hell can you think of food right now,” she hisses, clinging to me like her life depends on it. We don’t usually walk around like this, hugging; she must be really spooked. “I’m literally trying not to crawl out of my own skin.”
She refuses to trust the elevators—she says they remind her of coal mine shafts—so we climb another staircase to the top floor. As we enter the hall, a simple sign greets us.
Cells →
“I don’t like this.” Her voice quivers at my side.
“Just this last floor and we’re done.” I try to sound calm, but the truth is that even I’m starting to feel uneasy. I’m still not sure what this place is, but I don’t think it was welcoming even when there were people here.
The feeling only grows stronger when we reach the end of the corridor. These are not treatment rooms; not recovery rooms. They’re cells, complete with heavy iron doors, and when I risk a peek inside, the walls are white and padded.
“I hate this.” Eve sounds genuinely scared, now.
“Yeah, I’m not a fan, either,” I attempt to joke.
She’s as stiff as a corpse at my side. “Gives me the creeps,” she mutters and tugs me away from the padded room. “Can we go now, please? I don’t want to get stuck here.”
“There’s no reason we’d get stuck,” I reason, but let her pull me away.
“Judging by the amount of wind that’s making doors swing around here, I strongly disagree.” She’s the one leading the way, now, marching us back toward the staircase and out of the building. “Come on. I want to get out of here.”