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PROLOGUE

Waverly Hill Sanitarium
Louisville, Kentucky
Sunday, June 18, 2006
7:45 PM

Linsey Price stared up at the large, windowless, way frightening façade of the Waverly Hill Sanitarium as it towered before her, trying to remember what had lead up to this moment.

Earlier, she had been awoken by her best friend Terri Sanders, ready to chop her head off. It was the first month of summer vacation and Linsey was trying to go for the world record of sleeping in before school started back up again in August. So far, the latest she had stayed in bed had been three in the afternoon. The night before Terri had interrupted her slumber, Linsey had had a good feeling that Sunday was going to be the day she made it past five. Unfortunately, her best friend of ten years had deterred her goal by jolting her awake that afternoon.

"Get up! I have an idea!" Terri had shouted, shaking Linsey violently, her blonde hair slipping into her sleepy blue eyes.

"What now?" Linsey groaned, tossing a pillow over her face and hoping Terri would get the hint.

She didn't. Or, if she had, Terri had definitely ignored it. "You know that old insane asylum on Page's Lane that no one's been to in like, a hundred years?"

"It's an old hospital, and yes."

Linsey tossed the pillow away to see Terri push a tuft of brown hair behind her ear before continuing. "Yeah, whatever. Anyway, Greg, that annoying kid we had biology with last year, told me that they unlocked the gates like, a few days ago and people are daring each other to stay the night. Not like anyone's going to actually do it, right?"

"What're you getting at?" Linsey asked, propping herself up on one elbow and using her free hand to rub her eyes.

"What if we, you know, did what everyone's talking about doing? You know… stay overnight in the sanitation?"

"Okay, first of all: it's a sanitarium. Secondly, no way in Hell."

As if to put finality behind her already serious tone, Linsey threw back the blankets and got to her feet. The hardwood floor was warm and inviting, heated by the sun spilling in through the open bay window that illuminated her bedroom. Looking out it, she silently wondered how she could have slept through such bright sunlight.

"Will you at least think about it?" Terri pleaded. "C'mon! We can invite Sarah. Safety in numbers, right?"

Groaning in response, Linsey continued staring out the window. She knew Sarah would be just as against the idea of going to the Waverly Hill Sanitarium as she was, but would probably fold under the pressure of Terri pestering her just like she was with Linsey now.

Sarah Kyle was a new friend. Linsey and Terri had met her last semester in a Bible as Literature class at Central High School. She was exactly the type of friend Linsey's mom approved of: meek, devout, and studious—everything Terri Sanders wasn't. Also unlike Terri, Sarah wasn't the type of girl that would attempt to stay overnight in a clearly-haunted hospital. For a moment, Linsey appreciated the type of friend her mom was head-over-heels for.

But the moment passed a few seconds later when she remembered that Sarah wasn't exactly strong-willed. Linsey had quickly learned that the girl had a problem saying no, and knew her decision would be the deciding factor in this Waverly Hills thing. Knowing this, Linsey turned around to face Terri. "When?"

Terri smiled. "Tonight."

Now they stood outside of the abandoned hospital, Sarah's blue Subaru parked behind Linsey and becoming blacker in the fading light of day. The sanitarium was also darkening. As imposing as the five-story, wide-winged building was during the daytime, it was becoming something much more at twilight—something that silently screamed at her to get back in the car and drive away.

To her left, a flashlight clicked on, illuminating Terri's pointed face in a ghostly shadow as she held the beam beneath her chin. "Welcome… to the scariest place on Earth!"

Cracking a grin at her friend's overly-theatrical antics, Linsey rolled her eyes. "This is stupid." Then turning to glance around, the grin faded into a frown. "Where's Sarah?"

Terri held the flashlight to her chin again and raised her free hand toward the sky in a dramatic gesture. "She has been captured by the spirits!"

Linsey shot her best friend a look. "You can stop at any time."

Looking crestfallen, Terri lowered the flashlight and pointed toward the Subaru's open trunk with the beam. "She's praying."

"Oh," was all Linsey said, not sure whether to roll her eyes or commend her friend for doing so before entering a building with such a shady past.

They all knew the legend of Waverly Hill. As Louisville natives, they had grown up hearing its thousand different renditions of what had happened inside the hospital's now-decayed walls. One story, the one most rooted in fact, said that the place had been used as a treatment facility for patients with tuberculosis in the early twentieth century. Another, more wild, story claimed the sanitarium had been used to experiment on the mentally insane during the 1920s. But no matter what version was told, the tales always shared the same element: people had died horrible deaths inside and continued to haunt the place long after they were gone. And a place like that was not somewhere Linsey wanted to walk into.

But it wasn't like she had a choice. She had agreed to come if Sarah said yes, which she inevitably had, and now Linsey was stuck here with no ride home if things got too hairy for her. Her parents were out of town, and there was no way she was calling them in Baltimore to let them know she was at Waverly Hill with Terri Sanders and that they should come home to pick her up. They already weren't fond of their daughter's best friend, there was no reason to make it worse by letting them know she had been convinced to go to the place they had deemed "off limits" since she had been old enough to walk.

So she had to stick it out. Hopefully it would be uneventful and Terri would get bored enough to want to go home.

Hopefully.

"Hey, chickens! You comin' or what?"

Linsey snapped out of her thoughts to see that Terri and her flashlight were making their way to what she was sure had once been the front entrance. The doors were missing, but it was the only opening that reached the floor inside the three side-by-side arches making up the entryway.

Rolling her eyes, Linsey shot a glance at Sarah as the timid blonde shut the trunk of her car and the two followed Terri inside.

The first floor of the building hadn't been that bad, but Linsey owed most of that to the fact that they had gone straight from the front entrance to the stairs to the second floor.

The inside of Waverly Hill was just as decayed as its outside. Where the façade was nothing but rust and steel, the inside was graffiti and rubble. Most of the walls were spray painted over or missing altogether, and a majority of the floor was cracked, peeling, and littered in debris. As she looked around at the hospital with the glow of her flashlight beam, she had a hard time imagining the place up and running. It felt like the building had always been a cold, rotten fixture at the top of one of the highest points of Louisville.

The second floor seemed, if possible, worse than the one below. Pieces of the walls looked as though they had been knocked out with a sledgehammer, and doors hung as if held to the frame by fishing wire. The hallway stretched out uninvitingly in front of them as they stood at the mouth of it, all three girls contemplating whether they should try to make it to the other side or stay where they were. Even Terri didn't seem as sure of herself as she had outside, growing quieter the longer they were in the building.

"Maybe we should go," Linsey suggested, turning to her friends.

"Yeah, alright," Terri agreed. "I just want to check out one thing. I doubt the rest of this place is as exciting as the body chute."

"Come again?" Sarah piped up in her squeaky voice, clutching her flashlight.

"Yeah. They used to toss dead bodies down this slope thing. I want to see it."

Terri's enthusiasm seemed to be coming back as she spoke, giving Linsey an odd feeling. She didn't want an over-excited Terri leading them into the depths of the hospital.

As soon as they had walked inside Waverly Hill, the screaming voice telling her to turn back had become a roar. Wind, from virtually nowhere, had blasted through them the minute they had entered the sanitarium. Linsey had pivoted to go back to the car, but Terri had grabbed her wrist before she was able to take a step in the opposite direction. It was what had caused them to go straight from the first floor to the second, probably because Terri was under the impression Linsey wouldn't try to make a run for it if they were thirty feet above ground. Linsey, the longer she stood there, wasn't so sure.

"I'm not going some place with 'body chute' in the name," Linsey objected, backing away from Terri before her friend could grab her wrist and drag her elsewhere. "Besides, it's just some tunnel. Nothing exciting about that."

"You can't honestly tell me you find that boring," Terri grinned.

"That's exactly what I'm telling you. You go look at it and tell me how a cement slide can be considered exciting. I'll be in the car," Linsey said, pushing past Terri and Sarah and heading for the stairs.

"Whatever!" Terri laughed, following Linsey down. "You're just scared!"

Stopping at the landing, Linsey whipped around to look at her friends on the steps above her. Crossing her arms, she rolled her eyes. "I'm not scared. I'm just not stupid."

"So it's stupid to look at an empty tunnel that's not going to hurt you?"

"Yes!"

"I don't think it's stupid," Sarah piped up, fiddling shyly with the bottom of her flashlight as she spoke quietly. "I think it's kinda cool."

Terri turned and gave Sarah a large smile, then looked at Linsey. "See? Not stupid."

"Fine. Whatever," Linsey snapped. "Which way?"

Terri smiled again before jumping the remaining three steps to the floor and leading the way to the "body chute". Taking a sharp left, the three girls passed the front door and headed deeper into the main atrium. Linsey held her flashlight up to read the crumbling letters above a large, expansive archway with filthy swinging doors: MORGUE.

"You've got to be kidding me," she groaned.

No one replied, but Linsey could imagine Terri grinning.

Crossing the threshold, Terri lead the way inside. Two gurneys sat in front of them in the otherwise empty room, one leaning down toward the floor as if someone had sat on it and it had collapsed under their weight. To the right was what had surely once been the entrance to the autopsy room, but was now a cobwebbed doorway. Shining her light inside, Linsey saw more gurneys—these jutting out of the wall—as well as a chair that held a metal tray in its seat.

Suddenly, as if pushed by an invisible hand, the chair toppled over, the tray clattering to the ground.

All three girls jumped in surprise, with Terri accidentally colliding with the down-facing gurney. "Ouch!"

Linsey pointed her flashlight beam over to her friend to see that Terri's arm was now bleeding profusely from her elbow to her wrist and leaking onto the floor. Ignoring the pain for a minute, Terri reached out to remove a rusted scalpel that looked as if it had been jammed into the side of the tabletop.

"Okay. That's it. We're going. You're going to need like, five tetanus shots now," Linsey said, removing her cardigan and wrapping it around Terri's bleeding arm.

"Give me a minute," Terri said, pushing Linsey's sweater closer to the wound. "We're almost there."

Sarah frowned. "Maybe she's right."

Ignoring her, Terri made her way to the opposite side of the autopsy room and pointed her flashlight down a gaping hole in the wall. On one side, a steep slope lead endlessly down what was sure to be the other side of the hill behind the sanitarium, while a set of stairs lead in the same direction down the other half of the tunnel.

Taking a step inside it, Terri held her flashlight higher, as if to try to illuminate more of the chute. As she did so, however, the beam began to blink in and out. "I think the batteries are dying."

"Another sign that we need to go," Linsey said pointedly, crossing her arms over her chest and raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, okay," Terri agreed just as the flashlight finally gave out.

Turning to rejoin her friends in the center of the room, a sudden cold breeze wafted inside from the tunnel, kicking up dust. Terri, Linsey, and Sarah stood frozen in place.

"Weird," Sarah said.

"Yeah, tell—" but Terri was cut off mid-sentence as a hand appeared from nowhere and clamped itself over the girl's mouth.

Linsey jumped forward to pull her friend free of the bodiless hand, but it was too late. The minute she put one foot forward, the hand tugged Terri backward into the body chute. Another second and Terri was on her back, the sound of her skull colliding with the concrete floor echoing in a sickening crack.

"Terri!" Linsey shouted, not daring to take another step unless she had to.

"Linsey, help! Something's got me!"

Sarah fell back as Linsey darted forward. As her hands were about to clasp around Terri's, her friend was dragged farther down the slope. "Linsey!"

Heading down the steps, Linsey pulled her flashlight from where it was stowed beneath her arm and pointed the flickering beam toward Terri. At her friend's feet stood a woman with long, scraggly hair and wild red eyes dressed in a tattered nurse's outfit that looked like it belonged in a 1930's flashback film.

The woman growled angrily at the light being shone in her face and pulled sharply at Terri again. As she did so, Linsey's flashlight burned out, engulfing her in total blackness. A second later, the sound of dragging came, followed by a distant, "LIIIIINNNSEEEEYYYY!"

After a few moments, the flashlight in Linsey's hand popped back on, but the tunnel surrounding her was completely empty.

"Terri?"