“What?” asked Rebecca, shining the light where he was looking. There was the faint outline of a door in the wall in front of him, wider than normal, and though it had no handle or visible way of opening, it was obviously an entrance to somewhere.
Dex handed the camera back to me to film, and as I did so, he reached into the pockets of his cargo pants and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. I pretended I didn’t notice the way his large forearms and biceps were flexing as he stuck one end of the knife into the door’s edge and tried to pry it open. After a few frustrated grunts and failed attempts as Rebecca and I watched helplessly, he found purchase and with extra leverage, the door began to part from the wall. It let out a low groan and we were all hit with a blast of stale, frigid air. It wrapped around me and chilled me to the very core.
“Oh, man,” I said, taking a step back but remembering to keep filming.
“What is it, Dex?” Rebecca whispered.
He took a small flashlight out of his other pocket and stuck it in his mouth as he pushed the wooden door open the rest of the way. He grabbed the edge of the wall and poked his head into the cold abyss. I could only see the light from his flashlight bobbing faintly against stark cement walls, and I had this fantastic urge to reach forward and pull him back, as if something was going to come out of the darkness and take him.
He pulled the flashlight out of his mouth and turned his head to look at us. “Looks like we found the body chute,” he said just as a loud smacking noise resonated from the tunnel, echoing loudly and making my heart thump.
He aimed the flashlight back inside in time to illuminate a lone bouncing ball roll past him and disappear into the rest of the darkness.
“Holy fucking fuck!” I screeched, my voice catching in my throat. “No. No! Bad!”
“Shit,” he swore, now frantically trying to light up the tunnel. ”Did you guys see that fucking thing? Holy shit!” He waved at Rebecca. “Quick, bring the fucking light here.”
Though my heart was in my mouth, I watched Rebecca as she stepped forward and handed him the light she was holding. In the dim glow of the hallway, she didn’t seem scared at all.
“You did see that, right?” I asked her, my eyes begging for sanity. “Please tell me that wasn’t just for me and Dex again.”
She gave me a half smile. “The ball again? Oh, I saw that. I just don’t believe we’re truly alone here after all. And I don’t mean in the supernatural way, either. Who knows who Davenport has upstairs, playing tricks on us?” My mouth dropped slightly at her resistance to believe. She nodded at the camera and continued, “By the way, I really hope you got all that.”
As it was, I had gotten all of that, albeit a little shaky and peppered with our obscenities. But it was there. Despite how Rebecca saw things, it did feel good to actually capture something like that on film. It wasn’t proof by a long shot, but if it scared the shit out of Dex and I, it would scare viewers.
I looked up from the footage to see Dex staring at me impatiently.
“What?” I asked.
“Do you want to go in or not?”
Honestly, after seeing that ball go past, my answer was hell to the fucking no. But since Rebecca was so certain that everything was a set-up, a cruel part of me hoped we could prove her wrong. Besides, when you were with a skeptic, it made things a little less scary.
Well, in general. Probably not this time.
I took in a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves against the idea of going inside some long, closed up tunnel that some ghost child was playing ball in. “You lead the way,” I said. Then for good measure, I added, “Rebecca you can take the rear.”
I half expected to hear Dex make a joke about that, but he was so wrapped up in the moment that he didn’t even notice.
He pointed the flashlight into the tunnel and very carefully stepped down into it, me holding his upper arm for balance. Once he was in, he looked up at me. “It’s just about a foot or two lower than where you’re standing. It’s kind of slippery in places though, so watch your step. I’ve got you.”
Before I could say anything, he reached out and grabbed me around the waist. My weight was no match for his brute strength, and he picked me up and gently placed me in the tunnel so that my feet were on the step just below him.
“Thanks,” I said, never tiring from the feel of his strong hands around me. It definitely tried to take my mind off the current situation, but really, there was no getting around that I was now standing in a long-forgotten tunnel that was used to transport dead bodies. As Dex helped Rebecca climb in, I looked all around us. There wasn’t much to see except a few feet in front and back, as far as the light would reach. The stairs we were standing on were worn cement, splattered with dried stains that I hoped were dirt and rust. Beside the steps was a smooth incline for the stretchers to wheel on. The walls were cold and grey, and with a strange bit of relief I could see the remnants of a graffiti tag where someone must have left their mark back when the place was abandoned. If the vandals could brave it, so could I.
As Rebecca shined her light around, it seemed like the tunnel went on forever in both directions. “Should I prop the door open with something?” She looked genuinely concerned which threw me off for a moment, until I remembered her claims of claustrophobia.
Dex gently took the camera from my hand and the light from Rebecca. He eyed the door with consideration. “It’s heavy and has traction on the floor, see?” He gestured to the bottom of the floor in the hallway where the door scraped along. “There’s no draft in here either. We should be okay.” He slid his eyes to me, giving me a silent chance to back out.
“Well, let’s go,” I said. “We don’t have all night.”
He nodded and aimed the camera in front of him. “I’m assuming the tunnel runs diagonally along the length of the building. The very top probably lets out above the far corner of the west wing.”
I felt the darkness sitting on either side of us, the coldness of the tunnel seeping into my clothes. I quickly jabbed Dex in the back. “Hey, we’ll worry about that later. Let’s just get to the second floor.” It never left my mind for one second that the ball had rolled somewhere behind us, at the end of the chute, and there was no telling if the ghost that kicked it there had gone after it or not.