The ladder downstairs wasn’t put up, so he half jumped, half climbed down.
“Close it up”, he ordered Amber as a second thought. Less signs of someone having escaped would be better.
“Got it”, he heard the obedient reply from behind him.
River felt the adrenaline in his body as he followed the patient, ensuring that all opened doors were closed. Because Aspen had distracted the guard upstairs, everything was still quiet. No one had been alerted yet.
But he didn’t believe it would be that easy – simply because there were two guard stations downstairs.
In the end, there were still guards that made their rounds downstairs. Not as often, but they still did, which meant that even without everyone in a panic, the runaway patient had to hide.
This time he switched areas, trying to find a good way out, but was ultimately forced to retreat to one of the facility rooms.
River sighed.
The patients down here were far from being as sedated as the people up on the third floor. Not to mention they were nervous – you were always bound to sleep less well in an unfamiliar environment, and the people on the first floor didn’t stay for long.
The tiniest amount of noise made one of the patients in one room over wake up. She knocked at the door, tensely calling out for a guard, who quickly went to converse with her.
More and more patients on the first floor woke up when hearing the sounds. Soon there were questioning noises everywhere, causing nurses and doctors to pour out.
The director appeared, hoarding everyone back into their rooms with some lies before the security guards found and dragged the runaway patient out of the facility room. He was immediately gagged.
What followed was just a repeat of what River had seen before.
The reset wasn’t any more comfortable than the last one, but River was too concentrated to think about it.
What snapped him out of his thoughts was the odd silence.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Ktf fjrafgcfg aegcfv jgbecv, yilcxlcu lc mbcoerlbc ja atf rmfcf yfobgf tlw.
Crqfc tjv gfjmafv lcmgfvlyis mjiw ab tfjglcu jybea Elnfg’r mlgmewrajcmfr, yea jr kjr bynlber cbk, atja vlvc’a wfjc tf kjrc’a qlrrfv. Ktf rwjii ues tjv qijmfv tlwrfio yfakffc Elnfg jcv Gffg, ktb tjv jaafwqafv ab jqqgbjmt atf obgwfg.
Aspen’s face spelled slaughter and bloodshed – he wouldn’t hesitate to jump at the dealer’s throat if he came any closer.
River lowered the hand that he had thoughtfully placed against his lips. “…Aspen.”
At the sound of his voice, Aspen threw him a short look but didn’t stand down. Everyone had taken a step back to avoid getting caught in the possible crossfire between an actual murderer and a highly suspicious, two-faced man.
“Your puppy isn’t listening well”, Deer began goading him. His foxy eyes narrowed into a grin. “Why is he so hostile towards me? Did you not tell him about us?”
He purred the last word in a way that dripped with subtext. The rest of the players raised their eyebrows, surprise and confusion appearing on their faces. Only River didn’t react.
He lazily blinked his eyes. “I think he doesn’t like me getting drugged and raped by you.”
The Deer was someone who had worked in the drug den for several years now. He had met a lot of people, and broken a lot of them – it was fun. Up until now, he was also pretty good at judging others.
But he kept on failing to find River’s bottom-line.
That the other would admit these two shameful things out loud so easily… Did he not care at all about how the others saw him?
“Oh, or maybe it was the fact that you paired up with my brother and his friend to sell me? Or that you’re still supplying drugs to them, even now?” River tilted his head in fake thoughtfulness. “I’m not sure. Maybe one of those reasons.”
Deer’s smile had fallen. Honey eyed him with suspicion, but Deer wouldn’t be who he was if he wasn’t used to acting.
“It’s not like that and you know it”, he said with genuine sounding hurt. One could easily underestimate him like this.
“I don’t give a fuck what it’s like anyway. I just want you to stay away from him, and if you don’t, believe me that you will regret it.” Aspen’s threat was spoken as a kind warning. He had his hand on River’s shoulder in a gesture of possession, arrogantly refusing to give Deer a single further glance.
Amber was at their heels. She didn’t know what Honey would think, but personally she was still more scared of that Deer guy than of Aspen.
A bit down the hallway, River stopped to throw a sentence backwards.
“You are coming along again?”
Plaster and Rhythm, knowing they were being asked, hummed soft replies at River’s question.
Not wanting to bother too much with pleasantries, River accepted their help again. It was convenient anyway. They’d leave when they got too uncomfortable, and until then he could use their help very well.
“There are way too many patients here who could wake up. It’s a variable that can’t be calculated, so I don’t think that the patient is going the right way.”
“Anything you noticed?”
“It’s been bothering me for a while now, but… It looks like the rooms in the back are too short.” River pointed to the direction of the building’s back. “The wall would have to be pretty thick to explain why there’s such a discrepancy in size from outside and inside.”
Aspen clapped his hand together in enlightenment. “I got it! The sounds of footsteps, the sound of a cart, vanishing corpses and a wall that’s too thick. There’s a hidden path!”
River nodded in agreement. “This isn’t even a fantasy. There were asylums with corpse chutes or hidden paths so that other patients would not see the staff transporting the dead bodies away.”
“You’re kidding, right? That… really happened?” Amber’s voice was quivering. She covered her mouth in shock.
“It did. I didn’t think about it, but the thought of a secret path made me remember. It makes a lot of sense to have one go from the third floor to the cemetery, since a lot of people must die up there. Our runaway patient can use that path to get out and escape. It’s quiet and hidden and as we didn’t see a corpse during the night, it must be unused for today.”
“So we want to find the entrance for now?”
“Yes. I want to try getting into the rooms upstairs we haven’t gone into yet. There must be a clue there somewhere.” River tilted his head, keeping eyes locked with Aspen. “…Can I ask you and Amber to watch over the Deer? I’d take the two guys here up with me.”
“Sure.”
The three people who were ignored during the discussion were perfectly silent and acquiesced to whatever decision was made. They were definitely too stupid to reject River’s suggestions and too weak to go against Aspen.
“Also keep an eye out for anything odd on the lower floors. Notify me immediately if something sticks out.”
Everyone knew what to do, so River directly made his way up to the third floor.
The room that bothered him the most was the locked one that was to the side of the one they got out of. If there were experiments being done up here, you’d document the results. This wasn’t random torture, this was a place to test out possible treatment options.
Almost all of this floor was patient chambers. Other than that, there was the room for the security guards, one storage, the treatment rooms, and the one room they came out of.
That only left the last locked room as a place to hide precious documents. Putting them downstairs would be rather stupid, after all.
“Can either of you pick locks?”, River asked, not really hoping for anything.
“I can”, Plaster responded, to his surprise. When being stared at, he swallowed. “I-I played around with some oldschool stuff before.”
“Then let’s find you a makeshift lockpick.”
The lock on the door was in a better state than most of the locks on the third floor, but the one thing they had was time. When the lock gave in, they slipped into the room.
As he had guessed, it was indeed a storage for documents. There was also a little table with writing utensils and a chair, but the most important things were the countless, well-kept folders.
Author’s Note
You can google “Waverly Hills Body Chute” for some pictures. Personally, I find them oddly unsettling… Maybe knowing what they were for. Google at your own risk.
I’d like to say that despite the darkness, this novel is not a bad ending novel. However, don’t expect this to suddenly turn into sunshine and rainbows! I’m currently estimating us to be around the halfway mark to the end, for those that want to know.
Thank you for this setback that the deer took!! Give him no reason to be satisfied River! If I could add a sentence, it is that its very existence is a nuisance.
A perfect place to do urbex, looks like the backrooms.
Congratulations on getting this far!
Did I regret googling “Waverly Hills Body Chute? Maybe! The pictures are so unsettling, it can pass as a real life horror movie.
that deer guy greatly disturbs me, so as the other people around river. i hope they die or get something worse than death.
This arc really had my nausea levels rising, but I still want to continue.. (٥↼_↼)
Would love to have Deer strapped in there for a while though xD