The Courtyard
With our cameras in hand and our night vision on, the three of us walked down the few steps that were here onto the grounds of the asylum. The cold rain pounded down on us, soaking us more than we already were. The wind whipped leaves all around us in every direction as the thunder boomed.
Even with our night vision, it was still very dark and very hard for us to see, even just a few feet in front of us. We continued to walk forward, stopping at the edge of a fountain. Despite the horrors inside of the asylum, this particular fountain and the outside area seemed to be very orderly and clean, at least it did so far.
There were benches nearby; and a crack of lightning lit up the sky, startling us and revealing to us a wooden shed down the path where the benches were.
"Let's go check the shed out." Miles said, walking down the path. Waylon and I followed behind. We passed the body of a security guard, blood starting to run around him again with the pounding rain. I averted my eyes from him, focusing on the task at hand. When we reached the shed, we all noticed that the door was already open with just a crack.
"Martin? You in there?" Miles yelled from outside of the door. We waited a moment longer, and still, no answer came. Miles pushed the door open, and the three of us stepped inside, looking around. We could now see that this was just an ordinary tool shed.
To the left was a metal shelf lined with cans of paint. Directly in front of us was a wooden work area, with tools hanging on the walls above it. To the right, wooden pallets were stacked on top of each other.
Then, we noticed a golden key hanging on a hook above one of the pallets. Miles grabbed it, studying it as he turned it over in his hands.
"What's it for?" I asked, nodding at the key.
"It must be for the Maintenance Shed." Waylon stated, looking at Miles and I.
"Well then, what the hell are we waiting for? Maybe dipshit is in there. Let's go." Miles said, and we followed him back out into the storm, trying to find our way to the Maintenance Shed. We kept walking, heading down another brick walkway and passing up another dead guard sitting on a bench.
Once we reached the end of this walkway, we saw some stairs leading up on a platform, illuminated by the flashing lightning. There were stairs on the platform to the left and to the right, leading to an area accessible by gates. Above the platform was a bloody message: HOW ALIVE ARE YOU?
"W… What in the actual fuck…" Miles said as he read the message. We all walked up on the platform, and the lightning struck again, revealing what looked to be a document on the ground at Miles's feet.
"Read it." I said, stooping down and picking the document up, handing it to him, my teeth chattering against the icy rain and wind.
"I was planning on it. Blackie, Waylon, both of you, get your asses over here. Hold your damn cameras so that I can see. It's dark as fuck out here." Miles stated, and Waylon and I did as we were told, our eyes widening as Miles read the document.
"I don't even know your names. But I've come to think of you three as my own blood. I hope none of you mind. And I hope none of you indulge the vanity of self-pity, the fear that your suffering is more than others'. We all must endure this, and the three of you are nearly done. There's no way to Heaven but by the cross. And every man needs another to help drive the nails in. I am here for all of you. I am waiting ahead."
"So.. what is he saying? Are we going to be able to leave soon?" I asked, feeling more than a little creeped out by his letter.
"I sure as fuck hope so. Come on. Let's go find this asshole." Miles replied. We walked up the stairs on both sides of the platform, but we couldn't go through the gates, as they were locked by a chain and none of us had the keys. So we had to turn back.
"Maybe he's near the Maintenance Shed." Waylon speculated hopefully, ready to leave just as much as Miles and I.
"I hope so." I said as we walked back in the direction from where we had come. Miles stopped abruptly at the fountain, causing me to bump into him, and Waylon into me.
"Miles? What the f-" I began, but was cut off when the lightning flashed, illuminating a ghostly, shadowy figure hovering in the darkness in front of the fountain. I felt like my heart stopped beating at that moment. The Walrider. The. FUCKING. Walrider. It's finally found us. Just as I was preparing myself to haul ass, the Walrider flew above us, taking on the form of black clouds.
"Why didn't it attack us?" Miles asked as he watched.
"Don't fucking know but I'm glad it didn't. Maybe we should follow it." Waylon said.
"Are you out of your damn mind?" I demanded.
"Probably. Who the fuck knows anymore. Come on Lovelynn, Miles."
I sighed, looking at Waylon.
We followed Waylon in the direction the Walrider went. We came to a stop at the Maintenance Shed.
"Looks like our lovely priest friend hauled ass. Let's see what the hell is in here anyway." Miles said, unlocking the shed's door with the key. We walked into the shed, noticing that there were more wooden pallets and paint cans leaning against the brick walls.
There was a hallway inside of the shed, the only area we could so far see without a light. We made our way into it, going into the room on our right.
We continued further into this room until we came to another metal door. I pushed it open carefully, stumbling back in surprise and fear when we saw the Walrider. He hovered there briefly, before charging at us.
"THE WALRIDER IS BACK!" I yelled, my heart going into overdrive as we all bolted out of the shed. I came to a stop when I tripped, splashing into the fountain in front of us. "Mother fuck!" I yelled, sitting up in the water, as Miles and Waylon stood there, laughing in the darkness.
"Fuck you guys, I hate you both." I said, though I wasn't really mad at them.
"Blackie, the rain has already soaked us through. What difference does falling in a fountain make?" Miles said with a chuckle as I stood up, getting out of the fountain.
"He has a point." Waylon said, chuckling as well.
"I hate to be the one to say this shit, but guys, we have to go back to the Maintenance Shed. The room the Walrider chased us out of is probably our ticket to reaching dipshit Father Martin." Miles stated, sounding annoyed.
"Figures," I replied, following Miles and Waylon back to the Maintenance Shed. Once we got there, we headed back to the room where we'd seen the Walrider again. This time, it thankfully wasn't there. We continued onward, stopping at the end of the room, where the gated door swung open, bringing us back outside.
"Let's see what's back here. Like we have a choice." Miles snapped as we walked out into the rain once more, stopping when we noticed a ladder up the side of the asylum.
"Let's get up that ladder." Waylon stated, climbing up it, Miles and I followed behind him. We saw streaks of lightning flash across the night sky as we climbed, and for a moment, I worried that one of us would be struck by lightning.
Yeah, right. Lightning should be the least of my worries. I thought, annoyed with myself. We were now standing on top of one of the asylum buildings' roofs.
"Why the fuck is there a ladder to the roof?" Miles demanded, looking at Waylon.
"Maintenance or something is the only thing I can figure." Waylon responded as we continued forward, being careful not to slip on the slickness of the rain. The three of us came to a small gap in between the roofs, and we quickly made our way over it, continuing our walk on the other roof.
We stopped when we noticed a ledge sticking out from the wall directly ahead of us. We all slinked our way onto the ledge, our backs to the wall, being careful not to slide off to our deaths. Once we were at the end of the ledge, there was another rooftop, no more than a foot away from us. Miles jumped across quickly, followed by Waylon and I.
Once there, we continued on, walking up a wooden board onto a wooden contraption that led to another ledge. We shimmied along it, dropping down onto some pallets. We then reached up towards an opening in the fence, pulling ourselves into it. We now found ourselves inside of the gated area we had tried to access before.
"He couldn't have just unlocked the doors for us, oh no. The fucker made us do some rooftop jumping like a bunch of damn hooligans." Miles said, shaking his head. We walked through this area, stopping when we heard a patient whisper in the darkness.
"Have to get out." We looked around rapidly, but we found no sign of him. I hoped he wasn't dangerous, because right now, I didn't feel like running any damn more. Then, as we continued to walk, we saw the patient that had spoken slinking along the fence, whispering once more.
"I can see his ghost." Did he mean the Walrider? I hoped so, that was the only thing that would make sense to me. However, I wasn't going to ask. We stopped when we saw another dead security guard slumped over on a bench, mutilated body parts scattered at his feet. There was a patient in a straight jacket nearby on another bench. He looked at us, then he spoke.
"How do you three know you're not patients?" He asked, cocking his head at us. I frowned. I couldn't tell for sure if his question was serious or not.
However, I don't suppose it really matters now anyway. The three of us felt like we were stuck here, hell, might as well be patients.
"You could leave if you wanted to." I said softly, looking at the man in front of us. He laughed emptily, shaking his head.
"Don't be so naive. None of us can fucking leave." He snapped, turning away from us. I felt a hand on my shoulder, I looked up, it was Miles.
"Come on, Blackie. Just leave him be." Miles said, motioning for me to follow him and Waylon. We walked up the nearby stairs, coming to a sign on the brick wall that read "PRISON BLOCK".
However, the double doors were boarded shut, so we continued to our right, stopping when we came to a pallet on the ground, a hole in the barbed wire fencing for us to drop through into the asylum's courtyard.
"Do you think Father Martin is down there?" I asked, looking at Miles.
"I don't know what to think. All I know is that this is the only way for us to go." Miles replied tiredly, and the three of us carefully climbed our way through, dropping onto the ground. We were about to continue on, but the sound of Chris Walker's chains and heavy breathing entered our ears.
We all crouched down, crawling through the tall grass, careful not to make any noise. He wasn't too close to us yet, but we definitely didn't want him seeing us here. We waited with baited breath as he walked by, huffing and puffing the whole way past us. Keeping him in our line of vision, we continued to crawl along the fence until we reached a stack of wooden pallets nearby.
"We need to get to those pallets. And fast." Miles said, looking at Waylon and I.
"So.. Run like hell?" Waylon stated questioningly.
"Yes. Run like fucking hell." Miles replied, and we all booked it to the pallets. Each of us climbed up the pallets, jumping onto a wooden structure built out from the wall, leading to yet another ledge that we made our way across. We looked down from the ledge, another stack of pallets at our feet. We all jumped down onto them, quickly stepping off of them onto the ground. Lightning lit up the night, revealing a wooden gazebo with benches all around it. The three of us walked past it, sprinting into a run as Chris Walker charged at us in the darkness, his footsteps rapidly approaching us. We ran our way down a pathway, dropping onto our hands and knees as we crawled through a hole in the wall. Once we were safe from Chris Walker, we all stood up, approaching some glass doors that were shut and locked. A sign on the wall next to them read "FEMALE WARD".
"The Female Ward. Odd, because the only patients I had ever worked with here have been males." Waylon said, "But then again, there was a lot about Murkoff that I didn't know before tonight."
I heard what he said clear as day, but I didn't have a response. My heart was still going unsteadily, my legs feeling like Jell-O. I was amazed the three of us had made it this far. As the rain continued to pour, I looked into the faces of the men I'd come to know. Had it not been for Mount Massive, we probably would have never met. They were just as worn down as I was.
Waylon had a wife and two boys to get back to. I had a son. Then there was Miles. A cynical loner just trying to make it. We all had our reasons for being here.
And we'd be damned if we succumbed to this nightmare.