4
"Yeah… here it is…" Hyde was leading the way. "The morgue." He followed Eric's old sketch of the basement layout. The sketch was amateurish, distorted and not to scale, but it was their best way to maneuver through the complex underground tunnels stretching out in every direction. Whoever had laid out these tunnels was not a great engineer. The layout was eccentric and eclectic with no real sense of direction or purpose. Whole wards interlocked or were connected by tunnels. Blocked-off tunnels had to be reached by going around rooms and through adjacent tunnels. Rooms blocked other rooms. Chambers were reached by cutting though derelict operating rooms. To get from the main chamber to the morgue, Hyde had to take a side-tunnel toward a smaller hall and down another tunnel. He came upon the morgue within ten to twelve minutes, but one simple tunnel might have just made it five minutes. Loren was taping their experience. Kevin was there to support Hyde. Tammy and Valerie just wanted to come along.
"What are we supposed to be looking for?" Kevin asked. The morgue was about fifteen feet deep and twenty feet wide; there was a door to the left to another room and a wall to the right into some sort of utility room. There were two autopsy tables and a menagerie of forgotten derelict medical gear, supplies, furniture and hospital debris left over from the 1930s. All this space was just going to waste. The junk filling it ready for a landfill.
"I don't know…" Hyde opened one vault to see if there was a body in it then checked another one. Nothing. About the only things left behind was the old equipment, gurneys, wheelchairs, cabinets of dried serums and the furniture. If it was all cleared out, every rusted bed, every rotted desk, every dilapidated fixture and then restored, just possibly… just possibly the place could pass as a resort for people without enough stress in their lives who liked underground basement labyrinths, but then the ghosts might still have something to say about that. "Eric wanted me back here for a reason, but for what! I mean, am I supposed to find something?"
"Maybe…" Loren was still carrying his pack. "You know, in some cultures, it's believed that a spirit never finds rest unless its earthly remains are buried on hallowed ground. Maybe, we should find their bodies."
"Oh gross…" Valerie was trying her best to support Steven, but it was getting harder and harder. Tammy set her flashlight down on one of the tables to check the sink. When she turned it on, it coughed, vibrated and suddenly started vomiting rust-filled water… the longer it ran, it finally came clear, but she still wouldn't wash with it.
"We don't know that for sure." Hyde looked toward her then walked between the pathology tables. He suddenly stopped, looked around frustratedly and lifted his head to the room. "Eric! Eric, I'm here!! What do you want me to do?!!!" His voice echoed out from the room, bouncing off walls, resonating through chambers and unsettling the dust and foundation. As the noise reverberated back, it took another sound in the form of a gasping sigh. Something in the hallway corridor behind Valerie uttered a loud plaintive reaction back to them. It was as if the place itself was waking up for them.
"Hyde, I apologize for saying I didn't believe in ghosts." She moved up close to him. "Let's just go."
"I can't…" He responded.
"Wait…" Loren heard something and cocked his head to the hall. There was something out there. He heard a distant creaking noise. It wasn't exactly a creaking; it was an intermittent squeaking noise as if from something rolling through the place. "What's that?"
"It sounds like the door to the underworld needs to be oiled." Tammy improvised with a smirking grin.
"Someone's pushing a wheelchair somewhere out there…" Kevin left the room first with Hyde then Tammy, Valerie and Loren heading the way. Tammy noticed Loren flicking on his flashlight and then thought of hers. She had left it in the room on the table where the old autopsies had been done. She stopped, hesitated and headed back to get her light; Hyde and the others quickly leaving her behind unless she hastened her step. She strided back into the room, noticed her flashlight resting on its end as she had left it and turned around quite alone to catch up with her friends. When she turned around, the door slammed shut against her. Not scared in the least, she stopped a second and wondered about it. Why would it do that? She rattled the doorknob trying to open it, but it seemed locked. She tried to unlock it, but it just didn't want to work for her. The hub for the lock just spun round and round in her fingers unable to trigger the tumblers. She reached up to pound on the door hard with the palm of her right hand.
"Hey guys…" She called out loudly between poundings. "Can you come let me out of here?!" She stroked her red hair behind her ear. "The door locked on me and I can't get out!" As she pounded, the light in the room flickered and threatened to go out. Worried her pounding was causing a short in the system, Tammy stopped her pounding of the door, but the light flicked a bit more. It never went out, and she was glad about that, but that did not explain her growing apprehension. A chill went up her spine and the hairs on her neck stood on end. She had the same sensation she had when she was being watched. Her growing fears told her not to turn around, but she turned her eyes over to her left shoulder and turned round to the larger part of the room. She became aware of the appearance of Jackie Burkhart behind her, eternally seventeen, garbed in a clean white nurse's uniform with a body and figure that was almost superhuman. Her hair was almost completely black, her white alabaster skin perfect and unblemished. She sat upon the autopsy table with her legs crossed before her, her left leg underneath swinging back and forth.
"Someone's in deep trouble here…" She was fascinated by her fingernails for a second, then fussed with her long jet black tresses before smoothing her white uniform out over her thirty-eight DD chest. Her gaze looked over to Tammy with her rich blue azure eyes. "Hi, Tammy…" Jackie bounced up off the autopsy table, her paranormally enhanced bust size bouncing on her chest as she hit the floor. "Remember me? We had biology together."
"Jackie!" Tammy recalled her police revolver and pulled it on her. She backed away from her with the gun on her.
"Oh my god, you became a cop like your dad!!!" Jackie was acting as if was just an innocent reunion. "I never would have guessed!"
"Okay, Jackie…" Tammy blew her frazzled red hair out of her face. She held her gun at arm length on the petite possessed princess. "What's going on here? Why aren't you dead?"
"Tammy, would you really shoot me?" Jackie was coming toward her. She was backing Tammy toward the adjacent room. "Let's get rid of that!" She twitched her head to the left and the gun was violently ripped from the redhead's hands. The fiery female officer watched her gun flying away and vanishing somewhere in the room. Without that mode of protection, Tammy spun around ready to resort to her unarmed combat. Jackie's eyes turned completely black as her old friend grabbed her by the hand and flipped her over to her back on the floor. It was the same technique Tammy had used on an obstinate drunk by the side of the freeway, and that guy was much taller and heavier. Bouncing up from the floor unfazed, the possessed diva grabbed her old schoolmate up by the neck like a small child and lifted her up off the floor with her crimson red lips pulled back into a snarl of several pointed teeth. Pinned to the wall between a broken scale and a ruined curtain, the red-haired law officer was punching and kicking the smaller brunette controlling her. Holding her old friend by the throat, grabbing her other arm in her left, Jackie reacted unaffected from the blows coming at her from Tammy's other hand. She came closer and closer, pressing her lips against Tammy's lips and exhaling her essence into them. Tammy reacted with alarm, screaming into Jackie's mouth at the same time as cold darkness filled her soul and started taking over. Gradually, she wasn't fighting back… but giving into the darkness and liking it.