Message #5082

[Mutou Yami]

Chapter Nineteen
The Long Run

Maria grunted as I pulled her up off of the ladder. She was upset with me because I didn’t tell her where I was going, and she made that quite apparent to me when she grabbed hold of my arm and tugged me backwards, right before I reached the storeroom door.

“Hold on a sec,” she said, “Where are we going? What’s up with those rings?”

“I know what they’re for,” I said, “They might be our ticket out of here.” I wasn’t really at all sure if that was true or not, but I wanted to believe it.

She crossed her arms. “That’s fine and all, but even if those things can get us out, we can’t leave here without Laura.”

I turned to her. “Maria, she could be anywhere. She ran away from me, and for all I know, she could have left the hospital and made it halfway across town by now.”

“But we have to look! We can’t leave her here in this crud hole!”

“I don’t want to, but we have to look out for ourselves, too. This place can get us both killed. I’ve had more than one close call already. We can certainly keep our eyes peeled for her, but we do need to get out of here.”

Her look was cold enough to make me shiver. “That’s certainly the selfish approach. Yeah, the hospital’s dangerous. Nice work, Holmes. It’s dangerous for her as well as us, if not more so. Besides, where would we go? What if it’s as bad as this outside?” She swept her arms in an all-encompassing gesture. “What would you have us do, swim across Toluca to reach the Lakeview? No thank you sir.” She stared at me, challenging me to disagree. I declined. Instead, I opened the door and went forth. She followed me without saying a word. As we ascended the stairs, I noticed that the high-pitched screeching noise from before continued unabated and still sounding off regularly. I was no more eager to see what made the sound than I was before. I went on.

By the time we made it back up to the third floor, my knee was hurting again. It was a constant, steady pain, as if it were in a vise that was being slowly tightened. I shifted my stride a bit to keep my weight off of it. I was grimacing as we climbed, but once I was on steady ground again, it felt better. I tried not to let on to Maria how much it hurt, and if she did notice, she gave no sign.

We found ourselves standing outside the door leading to the third floor hall. It wasn’t but maybe ten minutes ago that I leaned against this door in abject terror for my life, and with the event so recent, I was very hesitant to open the door again.

The feeling doubled when I noticed that the radio was humming.

It wasn’t the loud, squalling **** of noise it was when the threat was imminent, but it was more than just white noise. It was the first time I had ever noticed it picking up on monsters through walls and doors. I was glad for the advance warning but I was also petrified at the thought of running through this hallway where three of those killers were lurking. We had to get through here though, sooner or later. There was no way around that fact.

With the radio still sounding its muted warning of doom, I carefully turned the knob, making as little noise as possible, opened the door just wide enough, and poked my head around the corner.

There it was. One of them was in the corner, opposite of the door. It stood facing the corner. It wasn’t moving at all, save for a sort of drunken swaying as it stood in place. I turned to look the other way, but I didn’t see much. Either of the nurses might have been as close as seven or eight feet, or they could have both been on the other end of the hall completely. I didn’t dare use my flashlight to check, because it would draw them like lodestones if they happened to be facing this direction. I slipped back inside and held the door closed.

“What’s wrong?” Maria asked.

“I had a tough time coming through here before,” I said. “There were three of them then. I only see one of them now.”

“So?”

“There’s a door on the right, leads to the hall with those small cells. I’m going to run straight for that door and I want you to follow right behind me. But you have to be fast, because one of them is right near that door.”

She nodded, and I felt her hand on my back as I pulled the door back. I still saw the nurse in the corner. It hadn’t moved yet, but it would once it saw the light. I thought about trying to shoot it from here, but I didn’t have that kind of confidence in my marksmanship, and the noise could alert the neighbors. No, best to just run past it.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

I steeled myself, keeping my eyes on the monster in the distance.

C’mon, Sunderland.

I had been holding my breath and I didn’t realize it until it escaped with an explosive whoosh as I darted out of the doorway towards my goal. The door wasn’t but maybe eight feet away, but as tense as I was, no, as scared as I was, it felt like a half a mile and up a hill to boot.

The nurse sprang to life, incensed by the intrusion. Or perhaps it was thrilled by my return. It turned on a dime, surprisingly fast. But it didn’t face me, the direction was all wrong. No, this one was after…

“Maria!” I screamed, “Hurry up!”

She was already out in the hall but she was standing still. Scared shitless, no doubt, but this was not the time. She snapped back to reality, from my voice or from the sudden moves of the monster nurse, I didn’t know, but either way, it galvanized her into motion.

Unfortunately, her hesitation was going to cost her with interest. The nurse broke into a shambling scoot, not directly towards Maria but in front of me. An intercept course. Bastards sure as hell weren’t stupid.

Maria was in deep now, and she knew it, too. But the look of horror on her face didn’t come close to matching mine, because she was in more trouble than she realized, and she didn’t know it.

One of the other nurses was behind Maria, fixed on her and moving at a clip. I didn’t know where number Three was, but it didn’t matter. Two, hell, even one of them would be more than my unarmed companion would be able to deal with.

I don’t really think I planned what I did at all.

There was a pipe in my hand, and it was her only chance. I gripped it with both hands and I wound up as far as I could manage in such a short time. I was full of panicked kinetic energy, and when it released, it was in a fury. I lashed out at the nurse’s head, uncoiling like a giant spring.

I didn’t aim high enough, though. The pipe delivered a crushing blast, but it connected on the nurse’s upper arm instead. It howled and shrieked and wailed, in fury and pain I supposed. The hit wasn’t nearly as damaging as I’d hoped, though. Might as well have been a love tap I gave. Its pipe was still in its left hand as it wheeled about to face me, and said left hand raised to return the blow with amazing speed.

Thankfully, my reflexes were sharp enough to fire without waiting for conscious command. As the nurse’s weapon arced towards my head, I brought my own steel pipe up to parry. Its pipe glanced off of mine hard enough to make a few sparks flash through the air, but it was enough. The nurse stepped back in surprise, but I wasn’t about to give. I charged forward, shoving the monster with the weight of my body into the opposite wall. It moaned in frustration as it tried to fight back.

I saw Maria run past and through the door as I held it back, and I was thankful she was quick about it because this thing was strong. It struggled against me and definitely had the power to knock me back. If it did, it would be upon me in no time, and the other nurse was only feet away now. I would be done for. So, I had to rely on a third occurrence of instinctive self-preserving tactics to survive.

I looped my right foot around the nurse’s ankle. Not even a second later, I fell back and laid off the pressure. The nurse lunged forward, using more force than it should have. When it did, I swept my right leg to my left. My foot caught the nurse by complete surprise, and it stumbled forward dramatically, striking the wall head-first. A starburst of blood splashed the wall, adding to an already disgusting display. Amazingly, the injury didn’t kill the monster. It still stood on its feet, though its head still rested against the wall where it struck, and its entire body was in tremors, as if suffering a massive epileptic shock. It was fascinating, in a horrible way, but I didn’t give it much attention, because I saw the other nurse coming straight at me. I was hardly eager to face one that was alone, no way did I want to tangle with it with one right next to me, even if it was injured, and of course there was still that third one that I couldn’t account for. Yet, it took Maria calling my name to jumpstart me. I whirled about and dashed through the door she held open for me. I slammed it shut behind me, and together we jogged up the hallway. It was only a push-bar door, it wouldn’t take a lot for our pursuer to open it.

We came to a halt in front of the elevator. It wasn’t that which caught our attention though.

“What on earth is this?” Maria asked, pointing at the relief of the woman etched into a door.

“Nice, isn’t it?” I said. “This is what I came up here for.”

“What do you mean?”

I had the two rings in my hand, one made of old copper and one made of lead. Two old and ugly rings, both too small for my fingers. However, they were an exact fit for the slender fingers of the woman extending out from the door.

I slipped the copper ring on her left ring finger until it rested in its groove, then I did the same with the lead ring on the right hand. When it entered its depression, we heard the sharp snick of the door’s lock as it disengaged. I turned the knob and pushed the door open slowly, wondering just what I might find behind a door like this.

What I found was more stairs. It was a stairwell quite like the other, maybe a little dirtier. There were no stairs going up, although really, the other stairwell didn’t need them either. I started down the stairs, with Maria right behind me.

Even with the flashlight, it seemed as though the darkness got stronger, more palpable as we descended. The walls looked less appealing with each step. And, as we looped around downwards, there were no doors. Four, five, six flights of stairs without any doors leading out into one of the main hallways. There was no noise at all save for the sound of our feet on the concrete and the reverberating echoes that resulted, yet the lower we went, the stronger the bad vibes felt. Where on earth was this leading to, anyway?

The stairs stopped looping around after perhaps eight or nine or maybe ten, I had lost count. Now there was one long, straight set of stairs. By the time we reached the bottom, the bad feeling that had been growing was now so strong that there was an almost-audible buzz in the air, crackling, latent electricity. It was warmer down here, and I was sweating. When Maria took my hand, hers was slick as well. I could hear her chipped, labored breathing against the back of my neck. I didn’t even have to ask her to know she was feeling it too, whatever it was.

The bottom, finally. It felt like we had been going down forever. We had to be below the basement of the hospital now. So where the hell were we? Was this in the hospital before? I had no way of knowing. I was quite increasingly convinced that we were in some sort of strange parallel to where we were before. I no longer really believed that I had been unconscious for years, because Maria had said nothing about it. In fact, she said nothing at all about the changes I was seeing. That did strike me as strange. I should have asked her before, because while I was still very curious about that, I wasn’t in any condition to ask at the moment, and I strongly suspected that she wasn’t in any condition to give me a straight answer.

There was a door, another plain metal deal that was rife with rust and general deterioration. I reached for the knob, and my hand rested upon it for a moment. I closed my eyes and tried to fight this sudden, almost-deafening fear that had wrapped steel clamps on my arms and legs. I was brought back by the feel of Maria’s hands, shaky and nervous, massaging my back lightly. I looked back at her, and her eyes were wide and shiny with the same kind of dread I was feeling, but there was a warmth there. It was that look, absent on her face most of the time, that caused me to confuse her with my Mary all over again. Those were her eyes that I saw for that brief moment. Even the gesture, it was something she would do, even if she was as scared as I was. It gave me the will to go on right then. I thanked her silently.

The knob turned, scratching and grating and finally ending with a dirty click that pierced the blanketing silence like a firecracker. I pulled the door open slowly, exposing a long, narrow hallway that turned a corner ahead but was naked otherwise.

That damned feeling, the dread, it was even stronger here. My breath came in short gasps now. I used my belt as a makeshift holster for the pipe and I pulled out my Glock. I entered the hallway and crept along slowly, trying to keep an eye out for something, anything. Step by step, the pace excruciatingly slow but that fear was deepening into full-blown terror now, all the worse because there was no tangible cause for it. Maria kept very close the entire time.

At the corner, the hall went forward a few paces and then turned right again, running parallel to the first part of the hall. It ran down almost exactly as long, and then turned another corner yet.

What kind of idiot design is this?

There was a sound. It was long and soft, like a sleepy exhalation of air, or perhaps air being shoved through the ventilation system by a distant circulator kicking in. I stopped dead in my tracks along with Maria. My heart was beating like a trip-hammer now, and I was almost light-headed from breathing so heavily. The noise didn’t sound like anything threatening, however…

thump

A new noise. Soft, but not as soft. Louder, too.

thump thump

Again. Louder. Louder and closer.

thump thump thump

Very loud. Very close.

Threatening.

I wheeled around. Maria did too. My heart, my poor, tortured heart which beat so furiously, now made a concerted effort to leap up my throat and completely evacuate, abandon ship. My spine went completely numb and I felt ice cold from my nose to my **** toes.

It was him.

Oh no, oh no, not now not NOW NO

It advanced upon us down the hall we had just passed through. Lithe and tall, taller even then it should be because of the enormous pointed helmet it wore. Terrifying even in its own right. Petrifying to see it stalk you, hunt you.

“Maria! Run!” I yelled as I took off down the hall. I saw her hesitate, saw the numb, terror-stricken look in her large eyes.

Not now, don’t get doglocked now, for the love of Christ

“Maria! Move! Run, god damn it!”

She did. She broke into a full sprint, coming towards me. And not two seconds later, the horrible visage of the red pyramid thing emerged from the corner, not plodding as before. It was actually walking pretty fast. Far too fast. At first I couldn’t figure out why. Then, I saw its right hand.

It wasn’t carrying its oversized knife anymore. It now had a spear, one that was tipped with a long, menacing steel head and had a body made of a long, thick wooden haft. It was almost black, by chance or design I didn’t know. It wasn’t important. What was important was that the spear was considerably lighter and less awkward to carry than that massive blade, and that meant a greater danger for me, for us. It meant Pyramid Head could move.

Please, Maria, run, run your ass off. Run for your life PLEASE.

I took off like a bat out of hell, my legs pumping furiously as I dashed. Panic was quickly overtaking my brain, forcing Rational James out of the driver’s seat and making my self-control erratic. And there were so many **** turns to this hallway! I’d turn one and fine another right in front of me. It was like a **** maze, and we had to run, we had to get to the end, wherever the end was, please God let there be an end, let there be a way out of this madness. I was in complete survival mode now, getting away from the red pyramid thing, getting away from it and back to safety was all that I cared about now. I ran, ran my ass right off, slamming into walls because I was running too fast, but there was no such thing as too fast because it was fast too. I could hear Maria keeping up, trying to keep up. She was moaning. She was **** terrified.

The corners finally, mercifully gave way to a long, straight-shot hallway. It was damnably long, disappearing into the jet-black, but I didn’t care, didn’t even try to guess how long it was and didn’t think about what I might find at the end of it. I simply ran into it, run run run. My lungs were screaming from the strain of exertion compounded by the stupefying terror that nearly seized me. I felt like I was flying and yet I felt the dread certainty that it was insufficient, not enough to escape that dread monstrosity that bore down on us, that leviathan with the pointed helmet and that air of hopelessness that it projected. It was almost certainly what we felt as we descended that improbably long stairwell. It was him all along, and I didn’t recognize it even though I had experienced it several times already.

Suddenly, the darkness was pierced by a slash of light, brilliant, welcoming light. The proverbial end of the tunnel. As I got closer, my crazy terror almost instantly transformed into crazy relief.

An elevator!

By God and Jesus, it was. It was an elevator.

I sprinted towards it with renewed vigor, the thought of safety and escape helping me draw upon inner reserves of energy. I ran for what seemed like hours down this long, endless hall, the welcoming light always seeming to be an extra step ahead of me. Finally I made it and I turned around, waving Maria on, yelling at her to hurry up. I could see her coming, running flat-out and almost sagging with exhaustion, being driven on by the sheer terror of the monster chasing her, the fear of death at his merciless hands. Each step was torturously slow and punctuated almost perfectly by the sensation of my blood pounding through my body by my tired, overworked heart trying desperately to keep everything from falling apart and shutting down.

Then I heard a slow, grinding noise from behind. I wheeled about, and when I did, my stomach almost fell out of me.

The doors. The doors were closing.

I didn’t have time to think. I practically leapt into the elevator carriage and grabbed the doors with both hands, trying to force them back open with all my might. Normally, they open back up with even light resistance, but fate wasn’t that kind today. These elevator doors fought back, fought back quite powerfully, and as worn out as I was, mentally and physically depleted almost to the point of collapse, operating completely on adrenaline and pure survival instinct, I didn’t have enough left in the tank to win this battle. The doors slid shut inch by inch by **** inch, certainly slowed by my efforts but nowhere near deterred. I could see Maria through my panicked haze, running all-out, screaming now, screaming in mortal horror as the same realization dawned upon her.

Closing.

“James!” She howled as she reached the elevator, she made it but she didn’t make it, she was too late, too late. Her arm shot through the door, desperate and futile, clenching and clutching for me, but it was too late. I couldn’t do a thing to help her now. She knew it, too. She knew it and realized it, and with that realization came complete, cataclysmic terror.

“Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaames!”

Behind her. He was there. Pyramid Head. Her screams became a wordless, formless shriek now. So did my own. I yelled and yelled, shouting her name but it was useless, and all I could do was watch and shout.

Suddenly, Maria’s wailing increased in pitch dramatically, a scream that was now pain and agony. Her hand shot out, her fingers extending in a wild starburst. And then I looked down and saw something I wish to sweet and holy God I never saw, something I wish I had died without ever seeing.

It was the red pyramid thing’s spear, extending several inches into the elevator through the door. The steel head was absolutely coated and drenched in blood. For a moment it seemed as though time stopped completely, a photograph that existed for a nearly interminable moment, a photograph that showed Maria, poor Maria, impaled on this **** impossible monster’s spear, her lifeblood soaking this end, dripping revoltingly onto the floor of the elevator, the **** elevator that wouldn’t stay open long enough for her to make it. I screamed. I felt my tortured sanity stretch to the absolute limit. This was it. I’m sorry Mary, but a man can only see so much before it crumbles. I’m sorry.

Then, the photograph disappeared. Maria’s soft, white hand went limp, and then fell. The spearhead slid back out of the door along with her arm, leaving a trail of crimson as it did. I let go of the doors. Why bother now? They slid shut and the elevator jerked to life, carrying me skyward. How far? I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I fell to my knees, and then on my hands, crying and sobbing and choking as I vomited all over the floor. I didn’t know I had anything left, but I did. My cries bounced all over the cramped walls of the elevator car and they didn’t stop, couldn’t stop.

Maria.

I’m so sorry, so god damn sorry. Ah ****, Maria! Why? WHY?

But no one answered.

I felt the elevator come to a stop, and the doors slid open behind me. I didn’t move. Maybe there was a monster or two lurking on this floor, wherever it was. I couldn’t have cared less at the moment. If a nurse came at me with a pipe and bludgeoned the crap out of me right then and there I wouldn’t have lifted so much as a finger to defend myself. I would have simply taken it until I collapsed dead in a puddle of my own puke. What a fitting, dignified ending for James Sunderland.

How long I was there like that, prostrate over my own vomit, I don’t know. I eventually stood up though, and walked almost mindlessly out of the elevator and into another hallway.

Now what?

I wandered around the hall, taking in the sights. I soon realized that I was in this new shitty equivalent of the first floor lobby. I set out for the front door. I no longer cared about finding Laura. She could fend for herself now. I no longer had any desire to find and protect the little brat, and what good would it do anyway? I did an absolute bang-up job protecting Maria, after all. She was lying dead way down there somewhere, alone with Pyramid Head. Lot of **** good I am as a guardian.

I didn’t even bother trying any of the doors this time. Didn’t care to see what was behind any of them. However, there was one ahead of me, and it was wide open. I walked towards it in a stumbling, exhausted gait.

It was an office of some kind, trashed and as filthy as everything else, but still unmistakably an office. There was a large desk that dominated the center of the room, and on that desk was an envelope. There was no name written upon it, but there was something inside. I opened it.

It was a note, written in careful hand on plain white paper.

“He who is not bold enough to

be stared at from across

the Abyss is not bold enough to

stare into it himself.

The truth can only be learned by marching forward.

I’ll be waiting at Neely’s Pub.

There’s a letter and a wrench.”

Who the hell wrote this? A letter and a wrench? At Neely’s? I remembered the place. My map was in my hand a second later, locating it on the map. Not very far. Who was there, if anyone? It was stupid, but the state of mind I was in right then was just ripe for this. I decided I would check it out.

I folded my map and slipped the envelope in my pocket, when I saw movement outside the office window.

It was a small figure skipping briskly along.

Laura.

She was okay after all. She was just fine. Good. She can go her own merry way. I wanted nothing more to do with her, regardless of what she might know about my wife. It wasn’t worth the trouble, as I found out to my extreme displeasure. She could do as she pleased. I had a bar to visit. I opened the front door of Brookhaven Hospital into the muggy darkness of the outside, and finally left this cursed place for good, and Maria along with it.

I couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry.

It felt good to be out of there, but it didn’t make the pain go away.