Page 35 of Into the Dark

Nigel stumbled back. His salt was in his right pocket, he’d have to shift the camera to reach it in time?—

Both mirrors shattered, and Zeek let out a shout. The temperature plunged, as if the depths of winter had overpowered spring and held the asylum in its icy grip. The creeper was there, right above them—or coming closer, unseen in the total darkness?—

Zeek’s headlamp cut through the gloom, nearly blinding Nigel. “What—oh fuck!” Zeek yelled.

The light from his headlamp revealed the dark shape of the creeper, scuttling like a spider across the ceiling away from them. It crawled down the wall, then vanished into one of the seclusion cells.

Hands shaking, Nigel snapped on his headlamp as well, and a moment later Adrienne did the same. Broken glass from the mirrors sparkled in the light.

“Is everyone okay?” Zeek asked shakily.

Adrienne’s skin had gone chalk white, but she managed a nod. “Y-Yeah.” She cleared her throat, then looked to Nigel. “Did you get all of that?”

“I think so.”

Zeek stood up, then helped Adrienne to her feet. “Let’s shoot our analysis of what happened somewhere else, okay?” he asked. “Like, as far from here as we can get.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. Though the cold was losing its grip, all three of them were still shivering. “Agreed. Did you see anything? In your mirror.”

He nodded. “Right before the lights went out. I think it was the nurse.”

“I saw a man in mine.” She looked to Nigel, who nodded.

“I got it on camera,” he said. “I want to take another look at the footage, but…I think I know who he was.”

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

Oscar stood frozen,staring in the spirit’s menacing face. As he watched in horror, her left eye disappeared, becoming nothing but a black void. She stretched out one hand, and her fingers started to fall off, one at a time, disappearing before they could hit the ground.

“What the fuck,” Chris whispered in horror.

The ghost lurched toward them, and Oscar back-pedaled fast. As she struggled to reach them, more parts fell away, until with a silent, agonized expression, she dissolved into nothingness.

“Is…is she still here?” Chris asked after a long moment of silence.

Oscar shook his head. The night around them felt empty now—no obtrusive sensations that didn’t belong to him, no inexplicable cold spots. “I think she expended all the energy she was able to get from the battery.”

Chris let out a long breath of relief. “That was intense.”

Oscar tried to think of any stories of ghosts with body parts falling off, but nothing came to mind. “She was trying to communicate something to us…but what?”

“Maybe you got something on the EVP.” Chris looked around. “You’resurewe’re alone now?”

“As sure as I can be.”

A frog chirped, as if agreeing with him. Another peeped back, and the night chorus slowly returned to its previous volume. Oscar listened to it for a long moment, then shook himself. “Let’s walk around a bit more, but I don’t think we’re going to find anything else.”

They wandered a bit, finding nothing more interesting than an owl, which flushed from a tree as they passed by and glided off on silent wings. When they arrived back at the command center, it was to find Nigel, Zeek, and Adrienne there ahead of them, all wrapped in blankets with mugs of coffee or instant hot chocolate. Tina had left her post at the monitors and stood beside them.

Alarm immediately shot adrenaline through Oscar’s veins—they shouldn’t be back so soon. “What happened? Is everyone all right?”

Nigel blinked up through his glasses. “We’re fine, but we had an…eventful time with the mirrors.” He turned his attention back to something in his hands, and Oscar realized they’d all been looking at the photograph from the superintendent’s office. “Dr. Herbert Wilkes,” he read off the back, then flipped it face-up again. “What do you think, Adrienne?”

“That’s him.” Adrienne tapped the picture with one manicured fingernail. “The man I saw in the mirror.”

“And the woman next to him is definitely the nurse who showed up in my mirror,” Zeek added. “What the hell was that all about? Was the doctor trying to warn us, or…?”

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