There was no way that she was going to allow Miles Upshur the opportunity to get this story before her. Hacking his email wasn't as easy as she'd hoped, but her timing had been perfect – just in time to catch his inbox pop up with one new message, an anonymous tip about Mount Massive asylum. This was the perfect story to prove herself to her boss. They'd never tell her again that she was worthless in the company if she could just crack down and expose whatever the hell Murkoff was doing.
Staring down the asylum, though, she began to question the decision. Media had always led her to believe that the scariest things in her life would be encountered at the top of a hill, in the dark of night, in the pouring rain where they could be illuminated by a violent flash of lightning.
Fittingly, Nina, in her beaten little green station wagon, caught an eyeful of Mount Massive in the faded torchlights, marred only gently by a thin mist that had chosen to settle. She swallowed hard, dark eyes tracing the grand archways and their grander shadows. A few windows were open. The lights appeared on, but, no, she told herself, the place would be under better management than that. Patients had bedtimes. It was probably only a reflection of the outside light. The only mark of civilization was a red Jeep out front.
Damn it.
Courage dissipated in her stomach. Did she have the power to do this? This was illegal. This was all kinds of illegal, but Upshur was already here, and when had that ever stopped her from something? The underground hacking courses she took in college were more than just illegal. And if she could get this story under her belt, if she could be ascribed as the woman who took down the illegal activities of Murkoff Corporation, even if she had to work with Upshur, the men in her office would never look down on her again. She'd never have to hear how she brought coffee to a room better than she wrote an article, or how she was supposed to be in investigations to provide a pretty distraction instead of asking questions. She'd never have to hear how she was more exotic than investigative, how a 'pretty chocolate thing' ought to be modeling instead of hacking. She'd be respected. Even if she crawled out of here with Murkoff written on her forehead, she'd look brave.
The anticipation didn't stop the place from being any scarier than it was. Her cell had dropped service an hour ago.
"Come on, Nina, buck it up," she growled to herself, smoothing a hand across her hair, the tight bun she had pulled it in. Her heart beat heavily in her chest, but with a last, lingering look at Mount Massive, she yanked her keys out of the ignition, hands fumbling for the items in the passenger seat. "When'd you start believing in ghosts?" She swore to herself.
She always had. She knew she always had, and had once even prayed that her mother's ghost stuck with her old jewelry, but bad ghosts didn't exist.
Double-checking her bag, she whispered to herself everything she needed. A notepad, the same small one she had purchased to interview the elderly on being moved into nursing homes, and a petite pen; a camcorder, an older model that she had inherited as an intern; and a flashlight with a pack of extra batteries. Her fingers almost grabbed for a bottle of perfume as a precaution. No one was going to smell her, she told herself, she hadn't even dressed up for this. Sweatpants and a loose T-shirt were all she needed for this, plus a loose jacket for the safety of early autumn weather. There weren't going to be any interviews, nothing to look pretty for, and thus she'd left her makeup as the thin remnants of black eyeliner and clumps of mascara from the day before.
But she hesitated.
Slender fingers wrapping around the perfume bottle, she gave a few furtive squirts around the base of her neck and wrists, rubbing them together. A light, floral scent filtered through the stagnant Colorado air of the car, giving a faint bit of relaxation to her stomach. A familiar reek, but the same one her mother had worn, even to the funeral.
Finally, she pulled herself out of the car. It was going to have to stay there, she decided. Upshur's Jeep was already a hassle to get around, and that said nothing for the fence left ajar for the security guards.
Jacket pulled tight against the chill, she glanced up toward the sky. The moon rose distantly, but it only sent a glow to the ever-lowering mist, offering nothing to the approaching darkness. It was more than likely going to be darker on the inside, and thus she had brought her flashlight. For now, though, she took the opportunity of the still-glowing streetlight to flick on her camcorder, turning it around to film herself. She flipped the screen so that her face was staring back at her, black eyes catching the orange glow. Her hair looked all kinds of frayed, she lamented.
The news wouldn't care about her hair.
"Alright," she murmured, eyes flicking away to the asylum ahead of her. It felt strange, talking to herself. "This is…Nina Amadi, I'm a reporter for the Cipher Gazette. I got a tip about some shady stuff going down here at Mount Massive, and I'm gonna check it out. I heard something illegal is going on and people are being hurt, so…here I am. And I'm gonna record the whole thing, so, here goes nothing."
With a sigh, she hesitated, then turned the camera around the face the asylum, lowering it so she could hold it more comfortably. Upshur's Jeep was here. How did he get inside?
As she approached the door, it didn't take much jiggling to get the fact that the door was locked. She hadn't bothered to check their open hours, or even if they had a website. It didn't surprise her, really, they weren't open at this hour. She still had to get in.
"Damn it, Upshur," she whispered, taking a step back. He couldn't just be wandering around the courtyard. He had to be inside.
Stopping, her brow furrowed. She wasn't here to find Miles. She was here to expose Murkoff before he could.
Crushing a few leaves underfoot, Nina turned.
Scaffolding.
Upshur was a sly bastard, and nothing short of athletic. For his age, she thought ruefully, hurrying toward the half-crumpled fence between the front door and the mass of scaffolding on the far left side of the building. That had to be how he got in. She could manage it, too, if she tried hard enough. Some of the gaps looked big, but with a thud in her heart, she reassured herself she could do it.
Just before the fence, she paused. What crumpled it like that?
Nothing. Age. Weather. A rock. The asylum was relatively old, it could veritably have been bent by age alone.
Nevertheless, Nina forced herself through the hole, snagging her hood only briefly. As she approached the scaffolding, she wet her lips, hefting herself onto the first level. The camcorder endured several abrupt turns and strange angles, but she didn't seem to notice.
She couldn't be too mad at Upshur for this. With each level she climbed, she felt her heart rising with fear. These were not heights she was prepared for, and that was a long drop. Her camera moved to her other hand so that she could prop herself against the building. The smell of mould began to rise to her nose. How long had these boards been left here?
One more level, and she swallowed her tongue.
There was a gap ahead of her.
Letting her eyes flutter shut, she swallowed hard, sucking in a sharp breath through her nose. Her shoulders set back as her eyes opened, and she jumped, feeling her fear momentarily melt away. Of course she was going to make it. Hackers didn't die jumping across scaffolding.
Her feet hit first, but her knees came second, and then the side of her body, precariously close to the other side of the board she'd meant to land on. Her heart jumped higher than she ever could. The slightest gust of wind was going to knock her off. The scaffold wobbled and wiggled as she stood, and Nina swore to herself the wind was going to push her to her death.
She'd made it. Despite her fear, she'd made it, and only as she realized this did she notice the golden glow of the window beside her.
Camcorder first, Nina threw her legs in after, and a cold chill washed over her skin. A foul smell, much worse than the mould, met her senses. Like too much metal, it reeked of copper, and she prayed for the best. The darkness took away her sight.
Fingers fumbling for her camcorder's nightvision setting, she held her breath. As the black screen turned a mild vomit green, she nearly felt the wind in her gust out, driving her out the window. A few bookshelves had toppled over, and a long black splatter made itself comfortable on the carpeting beneath the shelves. The chairs and other furniture in the room were scattered, overturned and propped against what appeared to have once been a fireplace.
"Oh—my god."
Swallowing back her fear, Nina allowed herself only a brief second to take it in. A thin light was shining on the other side of the room – an open door.
That tip might have been more right than she thought.
This wasn't the end of it. She had to find more of it, despite the pounding of her heart. That was blood. That was human blood, it had to be.
The cluttered hall beyond the door was mildly light, but cluttered. Cream walls met her eyes, no longer needing the nightvision function which she gratefully shut off. Her heart was thumping in her chest, worsened by the buzzing sound from the next room. A218.
Strange, how calm the next room seemed. Chairs all in what seemed to be their respective places, the curtains were slightly open, moonlight filtering in through the dust. The television was on, but it seemed the cable had been cut, and white noise filled the room in its place.
Staring it down for a long moment, Nina's teeth dug into her lip, and she was briefly grateful they were dark enough not to show most of the splits she chewed into them. A light bit of calm fell over her heart. It was just a static television.
She turned, slipping into the next hall, just as cluttered as the last portion. A215 stood across from her, boarded up.
Wasn't this place supposed to be in use?
What sort of mental hospital had boarded up rooms and cluttered halls?
Delicately, Nina slipped herself between some of the clutter, spilling into the next section of the hall. Bile rose in her throat. Maybe it would have been better if it really was just mould stains on the floor and the wall. Maybe the soft static of the television that seemed so far behind her now would have helped.
In the silence, she could hear the blood rushing to her ears, staring down the clear handprint on the wall, the massive smear of blood accompanying it, the dribbles and fat globs of it on the floor. It still looked wet, or at least fresh. Beyond the next open door, a spray of blood marred the plaque for A214.
Her footsteps were shaky. Moving on past the bathroom door, she turned in to the only open door at the end of the hall. Flickering soda machines met her, and a broken table covered in blood. A break room, perhaps.
Where was Miles in all this?
The thought came around a second time with more force. The blood was enough to be frightening on its own. Whether she liked the guy or not, this was worrisome.
An open vent hung above the bloody table, still dripping with the offending fluid.
As she pushed the camcorder into the bag at her side, she wondered, did she owe it to Miles to keep going? She didn't have the chance to call the authorities. Her cell phone, left in her car, was without service entirely. Someone was hurting someone in here, and maybe, if she left to call, Upshur would be dead before she even found phone service. The mountain was treacherous at night. She didn't have the power to take on a killer herself, but at least, if Upshur was hurt, she could help him get out. Two heads were better than one, if he thought that way too.
On her stomach, she crawled through the vent. The reek of cigarette smoke surrounded her on all sides. The golden glow of the room beyond provided a good enough incentive to get out, and she dropped to her feet from the vent.
Standing, taking out her camcorder from her bag, she kept filming. A rippled glass window, yellowed by the light beyond, met her. Another mess of clutter, like a barricade blocked off the hallway to her right, and upon testing, the door to her left was locked. The smell of blood had increased tenfold, choking her airways with a sharpness of metallic humidity. Below, though, she could see a shape sitting at a desk. Maybe he knew what was happening upstairs. A security guard, it looked like.
Moving toward the barricade to her right, she stopped. Library, the plaque read, but the closer she got, the stronger the smell became.
It was the only way through.
Swallowing hard, Nina set her shoulders back, using the nightvision on her camcorder to see in the dark library.
Her eyes clenched shut.
That was a dead man. That was a dead man, hanging upside down, with no head, on the far window. That was a dead man laying in front of her. The stains on the floor were all blood.
These were all things she had to come to terms with, quickly.
None were Miles. That she made sure of quickly. Though none of them had heads, she could tell – none of them were wearing that stupid jacket he always wore.
As she moved cautiously through the scattered books, blood, and bodies, tiptoeing though she knew her tennis shoes were not going to survive this, Nina began to hear a jingling. Christmas was too far away from this hellhole to be likely, and it sent a chilling fear over her skin. What jingled?
Slowing, her footsteps seemed to squelch their own pattern into the carpet, but the jingling grew further away.
The sight of a man impaled stopped her dead momentarily.
Amidst a pile of torn and mutilated bodies, their heads displayed proudly on the bookshelves, an iron bar had been ripped from the ground, and a man hung from it, his head lolling to one side. SWAT was written across the front of his jacket.
The SWAT team had been here, and this was what had become of them?
Pain ripped through her chest, a pressure like an elephant sitting on her chest. Her heart trembled, fluttering and dancing in a dizzing way. Breath catching in her throat, she stepped away from the dead soldier, moving toward the open door, and toward the jingling beyond.
She peeked around the doorframe.
Hulking, lumbering, the shape across the hall was massive. His skin seemed to ripple with each motion of his body. Chains jingled around him, and as he slowed to a stop, his shoulders rose and fell with a heavy, snorting breath.
Mouth hanging open, her camcorder rose without her.
She whispered under her shaking breath, "Holy fucking sh—"
A loud cry erupted behind her. Like a yelp without the femininity of it, it burst into the air. A hand touched her shoulder, shoving her aside, and as Nina fell back on her rear, she caught the form of a man, emaciated and partially bald, dash fearfully from the room.
The hulking beast whipped around. She could see the blood then on his face, the empty holes where his nose was supposed to be, the clown-like red lines bordering skeletal teeth. His blue eyes glinted with greed.
"Too many pigs!" He howled. Thundering after the frightened and thin figure, he disappeared down the hall.
Scrambling up, Nina took her camcorder up again. Her shock lasted only a second before she was off, running to the other end of the hall, where she disappeared into the stairwell.
How had a thin little man been able to shove her with that much force? What was that thing? What was happening here? What had happened here? Where the hell was Upshur?
The glimpse she'd caught of a hole in the glass gave her a frightening idea of where he could have gone, but she prayed that she wasn't going to find a pool of blood at the base of the stairs filled with the body of a journalist. That wasn't what she'd come here for.
Catching her breath on one of the flights, Nina stood as still as possible. This was hard to come to terms with.
Upshur had gotten a tip from an inside source to come investigate. Upshur was here. That meant the source was probably still here, too.
But there was so much blood. So much death, and the entire building seemed to reek of it. A roil of sickness found her stomach.
There were too many questions rolling about in her mind, and she had already forgotten that her camera was still pointed ahead of her.
Her trembling hand reached out for the railing of the stairwell, supporting herself as she stumbled down the remaining half of a flight. Swimming eyes found the base of the foyer before her body did, and yet somehow, this time, she didn't stop.
She kept walking, moving shakingly toward the mutilated bodies scattered throughout the room. Yellow-orange glow setting a spotlight to the center of the room, from her darker corner, she could see, just barely, the hunched back of a bloodied security guard, and the flat puddle of blood and intestines strewn about in front of the desk. Mercy was not shown here.
Nearer to her, two headless men lay in pools of their own blood. Tiptoeing around them, her heart palpitated. The beat increased as she crossed further, creeping behind the desk.
The computer glowed brightly. Murkoff's name was all that showed on the screen.
Was there the time to hack it?
Heart leaping, Nina glanced behind her. Nothing. The shadows offered no movement. Above her, the only thing that dared to move was a tiny piece of glass, nearly invisible to her eye, finally giving way and breaking from the hole in the window. She shuddered at the sight. Her gratefulness that Upshur hadn't been at the base of the stairs after all was overpowered by all the bodies around the floor, but the thought still lingered. Had that beast of a man found the other investigator?
Still, it was nowhere in sight.
Crouching over the computer, she took in a slow breath, punching in numbers and codes familiar to her. Ten minutes in silence, with just the clacking of the computer before her, pulled up a sign-in page.
Nina stared at it blankly. She didn't have sign-in information.
Then, whipping around, she noted the security guard. Newman, Roderick.
Fishing around the papers scattered across the desk, she found a sheet, a printed email. The sender showed at the top of the page. r. newman murkoff. us. com.
Relief settled quickly into her heart.
As she began to type – r. newman – much to her delight, a line of dots appeared in the second row. The security guard had cookies on this computer. He hadn't wanted to log in more than once, and now, it was letting her log in with just his email. Chance was kind, but rare.
"You're welcome."
She couldn't breathe.
That was not a familiar voice. Right behind her, but not familiar. Cold air settled fast over her skin, freezing her solid in her place.