Elliot went upstairs quickly before Olivia could stop him. He didn't understand her irrational fear of this building. She was never like that, not in all of their years as partners. To him, the place looked completely normal. Other than that window incident, he couldn't see or hear the things she mentioned, and he was sure that the banging on the window was just the storm wreaking havoc outside. He wanted to believe her, but he couldn't help but think she was imagining the whole thing because she was stressed about Noah and because of the creepy vibe that old, abandoned buildings often gave.
He smiled when he remembered how she jumped into his arms not long ago. She looked genuinely terrified, but it still felt good that she sought comfort and safety in him, just like back in the day. Back then, they took care of each other better than they took care of themselves. He told Olivia once that she and his kids were the only things he had left after Kathy had left him. But the truth was, she was his stability throughout all of his years working with her. No one got him quite like she did, not even after he left and worked with other people. Their synchronization was something he couldn't find with anyone else, and he knew that now it wouldn't be different. That is, if she'd let him back into her life.
The first floor was a long corridor of guest rooms. The doors that led to them were all along the straight, seemingly endless line of architecture, with a gap between them at the entrance to allow an opening for the stairs. On the opposite wall was a door with a faded 'Gym' sign on it and a big flower pot next to it, filled with dry soil. The plant that had once inhabited it was long gone.
Elliot turned on the flashlight on his phone and checked the reception, which was still zero. He examined the corridor with the light before entering it and saw that there were no windows in it, not as far as he could see. He started to walk down the corridor in search of a window or at least an open room that had one, in the hope that it might help get enough service to make a phone call. The blackness didn't allow him to see anything outside of the beam that his phone emitted, so he walked carefully close to the wall, in a slow pace. Other than his own breathing, he didn't hear any sounds around him. The carpet underneath him muffled the sound of his footsteps.
Suddenly, he thought he heard someone yelling something indistinguishable from a distance. He instinctively looked back but he knew it wasn't Olivia. It didn't sound like her at all, though it did sound familiar.
"Hello?" he called. No answer. He moved several steps forward, squinting in the dark to better concentrate on his surroundings. The thought of people staying in this abandoned building didn't even cross his mind. The hotel was in a remote location and it didn't feel like someone had been living there. Elliot kept listening to the silence, convinced that he must have imagined it. And then he heard it again.
"Dad!"
It was a muffled call. He was sure he had misheard it, but it made him nervous anyway. The thought of one of his children being there sent chills down his spine.
"Who's there?" he tried one more time a little louder. Again, he only heard his own fast breathing. He tried to open other doors, but they were all locked.
"Dad, help!"
This time the voice was clear and sounded closer. The person seemed to be in distress and it made Elliot's heart pound in his chest.
"What the hell?" he mumbled to himself as he pulled out his gun and aimed it in front of him at 45 degrees. He tried to tell himself that if there was someone there, it couldn't be any of his children, but he still had a bad feeling that settled in his stomach like cement. "Where are you?" he yelled.
A high-pitched scream slashed the emptiness of the corridor like a knife. Elliot started to run almost blindly, squeezing the handle of every door he passed in an attempt to open them and find the person.
"Dad, help! It's hurting me!"
Now he heard the voice loud and clear. To his dread, he recognized it. It made him stop in his tracks and look around frantically, even though he couldn't see much.
"E-Eli!" he called in desperation, refusing to fully accept that it was true. There was no way to tell where the voice was coming from, but it definitely sounded like his youngest son. Each time he heard it, it seemed to come from a different direction.
Then he suddenly heard crying. It sounded hopeless. Painful. The fact that Eli was there did not seem possible, but Elliot couldn't think clearly. All he knew was his boy was in trouble and he had to find him.
"Eli! Where are you?!" he kicked the door next to him several times trying to open it. The wood cracked a little where his shoe hit it, but nothing more.
"Dad?"
Eli's voice came from right next to him. Elliot aimed the light in all directions frantically, but he was alone.
"Eli?! This isn't funny! Come here right now!"
Crying. It came from the room opposite the door he had tried to kick in. He took a few steps to cross the corridor and opened the unlocked door. He started to scan the room with his light, even though it wasn't completely dark like the corridor. It was almost empty, but by the window on the opposite wall stood a broken chair. The dim, stormy afternoon light came in through the dirty glass, revealing a person-like shape on the floor in the middle of the room.
Elliot ran to it and saw his teenage son's motionless body. He froze for a moment, feeling nauseous.
"Eli, this isn't funny," he said again, this time in a weak, defeated tone. He knew what he was looking at before it registered in his brain. Eli didn't show any sign of being conscious. Elliot knelt next to him and let his gun drop out of his hand before he took Eli's hand in his hands. Tears started streaming down his face as he checked his youngest son's pulse. Nothing. He was cold and lifeless as if he had died hours ago. Elliot tried to resuscitate him, to get his heart pumping again. At one point, he lost track of time.
There was no use. Eli was long gone.
"No… this can't be," Elliot sobbed, caressing Eli's peaceful face. "You just called out to me a minute ago. How's that possible?" He took him in his arms, rocking back and forth for what seemed like forever. He didn't want to let go. Nothing made sense, there was no way Eli could be there.
After a while, Elliot stopped crying. An empty sensation made him feel numb on the inside. He didn't know how much time had passed, but the meager light outside was fading quickly now to be replaced by the darkness of the night. The stillness of the room around him gave him a strange, heavy feeling, as if it had a tangible weight that he could feel on top of him.
He couldn't bring himself to think too much of it at that moment, but the sound of the pouring rain was completely blocked out from the room somehow. In the back of his mind, he thought it was strange, but he had bigger problems to deal with.
Elliot listened to his own breath, wishing he could hear his son's again instead. He thought he would hear Olivia's footsteps at some point as she would come looking for him, but that didn't happen. A wave of disappointment mixed with relief that she didn't have to see him falling apart washed over him for a second before it was gone, leaving him empty again. Everything in his vicinity was quiet and motionless. It made him notice how tired he was. Seeing Eli like that had drained all the energy out of him. If it wasn't for his son's dead body in his arms he could've fallen asleep right there. His eyes felt heavy, his breathing slow and deep. He needed to escape.
Suddenly he heard a strange sound somewhere behind him. A gurgling. He turned around and stared into the blackness behind the open door. It sounded like something was lurking there, some sort of a predator. It surprised him again that he didn't consider it until then, but there could definitely be animals in this abandoned building. Maybe even dangerous ones. But the more he listened to it, the less it sounded like any animal he could possibly think of. Maybe it was a person with really bad respiratory issues. If that was the case, he figured it must be the person who hurt Eli.
"Hello? Anyone there?" he said as he felt the anger building up inside of him. If he found the person who did this, he knew he would lose control. He had made some progress in learning how to control his anger, but not when it came to his children's lives.
There was no reply, but the gurgling continued.
"If you're injured or sick I can help you," he decided to try and be nice to lure them out.
Still no reply. For a second, the gurgling stopped, but then it started again, somewhat louder. Elliot squinted but he couldn't see anything. The room was almost completely dark and there was no way to see anything behind the door, as that corner was even darker. He turned on his phone's flashlight again and aimed it at the sound.
The gurgling stopped again for a moment, but instead of starting again like before, Elliot noticed the door start to move. At first, he didn't understand what he was seeing, but then he realized that what he saw were four scrawny fingers with long, pointy nails, creeping toward the side of the door visible to Elliot and grabbing it. The skin color was a weird gray, almost dead looking.
Elliot placed Eli's body back on the floor carefully and got on his feet with his phone in his hand and the flashlight on. The door began closing slowly. It made a creaking noise that sounded extremely loud in the silence. It was like a scene from a horror movie - a genre Elliot didn't like at all.
"I'm warning you… if you don't identify yourself I'll shoot," it was only then that he realized that his gun was still on the floor, next to Eli's body. He thought to pick it up, but he didn't want to take his eyes off whatever it was that was moving in the dark or bend down and make himself small and vulnerable.
Suddenly the door slammed shut and Elliot saw the thing in its entirety right before it lunged at him. It had the form of a human, but it definitely wasn't one. All of its teeth were long and pointy, its eyes a light shade of gray in the beam of the flashlight, similar to those seen on a dead body. It had something resembling hair that went over its shoulders, but it looked as if it had never been washed or combed. Only when it got closer to Elliot did he notice that the thing was wearing Eli's clothes over its bony body, even though Eli was fully dressed.
"What the hell…" Elliot turned around to his son, but he was gone. "Eli!" dread fell on him at once. He couldn't understand any of it. He turned back and the thing's face was an inch from his. It opened its mouth and revealed its teeth, signaling it was about to attack. Elliot wanted to run, but his lungs ran out of air at once and his legs failed him. Looking the horror straight in the eyes from so close paralyzed him. He was about to be eaten alive, and he couldn't do anything about it.
When I opened my eyes again, the room was pitch-dark. I heard the consistent rain falling on and around the hotel building and it sounded really loud to me, which made me realize that my head was throbbing, in particular my forehead. I touched it with my fingertips and felt the hot spot where it had slammed into the mirror. There was something hard in my hair. I tried to pull it out but it was stuck. I'd been in that situation before, so I knew immediately that it was dry blood. I felt it mostly at the roots close to the wound, but some trickled further down toward the tips.
The room spun in a whirlwind for a few seconds when I sat up. I closed my eyes tight and waited it out, my hand still holding my head.
As I sat there in the dark, it all started to come back to me. The man's face reappeared in my mind. I still couldn't place him, even though he was so familiar. What he said to me were words I would never forget – the words that Lewis said to me when I came back home and he was waiting for me with a gun. But how could that man know about it? A chill went through my body like a warning sign. Could he have known Lewis somehow? What did he want now, after all this time? And where was he?
I opened my eyes wide in the dark to see if I was alone and realized that the daylight was replaced by darkness. Around the room I could see several shapes, but it was too dark to recognize anything. I didn't know the place well enough to remember what was where. Nothing was moving, but I had goosebumps. I had an odd feeling that I wasn't alone.
"Elliot?" my voice was shaky. I knew he wasn't there because he would've looked for me.
"Wakey wakey."
The voice made my blood freeze. It was coming from the direction I was looking at, but I couldn't see anyone. I remembered that there was a vintage sofa there and figured that the man from before was sitting and waiting. The realization that he had been there all this time, watching and waiting for me to wake up, made me nauseous. He laughed as I stumbled to my feet as quickly as I could while sending my hand to my gun. It was still in its holster, which I thought was strange, but I had no time to question why he hadn't taken it. Maybe he just didn't realize I had it. I saw his dark figure moving toward me. He wasn't in a hurry. He was playing.
I aimed my gun at him with shaking hands. "Who are you?" my voice came out weak and insecure.
He laughed again in a sinister, almost inhuman way. "I'm your worst fear." His voice was distorted in a way I've never heard before. I couldn't understand what I was facing. I wanted to scream.
"Don't come any closer!" I did my best to yell, but my voice was just slightly louder. My vocal cords were failing me when I most needed them.
He laughed harder and kept moving. How well did he know the room that he wasn't bumping into anything?
"Stop or I'll shoot!"
"Let's play." He was really close to me now. I had no choice but to fire my gun. One, two, three bullets hit the upper part of his shadowy figure. He stopped moving and I waited for him to fall to the floor. My eyes were wide open in terror and I felt the darkness pressing against them as I tried to see what was happening in front of me.
He didn't fall or move at all. Panting, I searched for my phone with my free hand and found it in my back pocket. With a shaking hand, I turned on the flashlight while trying not to take my eyes off of him for more than a second at a time, and aimed the beam in his direction.
"What?" I whispered, dumbfounded when I saw he was standing there, looking at me with an angry expression on his face. He seemed unaffected by the three bullet holes in his chest. In his state of anger it suddenly hit me that something about his eyes reminded me of Lewis, but nothing else. Could I have missed the fact that he had a brother?
I blinked and he was gone. He wasn't lying on the floor or walking away, he just disappeared. My breathing was fast and shallow as I struggled to catch air while fear tainted every inch of my being. I scanned the room to my right and then to my left, searching for movement with my gun pointing at the air in front of me, but everything was still.
All of a sudden I heard a soft laugh at the back of my head. I knew it was him before I started to turn around slowly, scared of what I was about to see. The understanding that I wasn't dealing with an actual person dropped on me like a bucket of ice water.
I aimed my light at the sound and saw him standing there with a blank expression in his vacant eyes. I wanted to ask him again who he was, but he grabbed my neck and squeezed tight.
"Game over," he said in his strange, horrifying voice.
I pushed him away from me and stumbled backward, trying to free myself from him. To my surprise, he let go of me and I bolted to the staircase outside the sitting area. I had to find Elliot. It had been three hours since he had gone upstairs. What if something had happened to him? My heart felt like it was pounding out of my chest at the thought of it. I couldn't lose him again.
I didn't look back as I started running up the stairs. I had no idea if he was coming after me and if he would follow me upstairs, but I kept going as if he was, wishing I had an actual flashlight with a bigger beam so I could see my surroundings better.
"Elliot?" I yelled when I reached the landing of the first floor. I didn't know which way to go. What if I went in one direction, and he wasn't there? By the time I got back to this entrance, I might not be alone again.
There was no answer. I stopped and listened for any movement, but couldn't hear anything. The silence pressured my ears as I aimed my gun forward with one hand, and held my phone with the flashlight with the other. I chose to trust my instincts and go to the left, taking a few steps in that direction before I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. I stopped dead and looked behind me without the flashlight, so as not to reveal exactly where I was. My heartbeat accelerated and my hands were shaking again. Or maybe they never stopped.
The steps were slow and steady, as if someone was just casually going up the stairs. With every step, they became louder, echoing in my ears as if yelling at me to run. They were seconds away from me and I was frozen in place, unsure what to do. If it was the same person – or the thing that had come after me downstairs – my gun wouldn't help me. I had a split second to decide.
At once, I turned back in the direction I was heading in and without looking back, I started running as if my life depended on it. And it probably was.