Silent Letters; Murmur

Silent Letters; Murmur

It wasn't too far-fetched an idea.

A mental asylum full of easily-excitable patients was bound to get it's share of scrapes and cuts along the way. Alcohol would be applied to the wound to 'eat at' any lingering bacteria and prevent infections. What else 'eats at everything'? Fire? Black holes?

"I... I guess that's the only reasonable answer." Monika's expression was one of blank perplexion. Her mumbling seemed to be directed more to her own worried mind than Trish's question. "What would he need with medical alcohol...?"

Unlike before, the two women didn't have the benefit of specific destinations, as they had before. Brookhaven Hospital, a room starting with 's', and the power control room all definately existed in definite locations. Medical alcohol however, proved to be a harder find, and after only five minutes of aimless wandering, Trish and Monika instead opted an entire sweep of the second story for anything at all besides empty or locked rooms. The attempt proved not to be in vain.

What was that? Monika stood at the doorway of a storage closet she had just stepped back out of to leave. Something had caught the stray light from the crack of the long-since-opened door and reflected it right at the last milisecond. She squinted and moved further inside, both hands out. After a quick call out to her friend and a minute or so of groping around in the dark...

Clik. Fingernail against plastic. It was a very familiar sound to someone studying in the medical field.

Monika navigated her hand around the object in question, so it's hard surface was touching her palm, and carefully lifted it up from it's obscure place on the back of a dusty shelf. The bottle (she was now absolutely sure it was a medicine bottle) replied with a soft clatter of pills. Once she was back into the limited radius of her cell phone's screen light, she saw that it was brown, with 'Oxydol' faintly printed across the white label.

"That makes sense!" Monika nodded excitedly. "We use Oxydol in the hospital to clean out wounds... to eat bacteria! I can't believe Ian knew about that..."

She was almost flattered that he'd go through the trouble of including something in their makeshift scavenger hunt that related with her occupation. Just very slightly, but not quite. There was, among other things of course, still the trouble of how the Oxydol would help them at all.

The very next thing they found was an elevator. According to Trish's partially-shredded map, the building had two in total, and they had just found the other one.

"You know Trish, he's smarter than you give him credit for." Monika's voice was grave with a very subtle hint of impression. "We should really be careful."

Trish was moving down the line of destination buttons, starting from story three and moving her finger down along the line. Monika had opened her mouth to say something more, but was interrupted with her own sharp yelp at the sudden shudder and jolt of the elevator, unexpectant of any reaction from a device that seemed even less capable than the almost inoperative lift they had come out of.

"Which button did you press?!"

Anything but basement. PLEASE, anything but there...

"Be... It was the only one that worked," Trish mumbled, looking up at the ceiling of the elevator as it creaked downwards, groaning harshly against the walls.

How could a building so normally populated have fallen into a manner of such disrepair in a matter of days? Hadn't Monika's aunt been there just two days ago, right before the holiday?

And what of the patients?

None of it made any sense at all, but her thoughts were cut short when the elevator slowed and stopped, the doors pausing unlike before and slowly allowed them passage.

The basement was, oddly enough, lit. There was a light in the center of the hall and right above the middle of the alcove they were standing in with a cage around it, probably to prevent misuse and patients from hurting themselves or the light source, not that she could fathom why they would possibly be allowed to get into the basement anyway, but it was reasonable to think that it was strictly protocol.

On the floor and walls were a mix of white and faded blue tiles, all covered with some amount of dust, dirt and grime, making her wonder again if this place really was so busy as Margaret had always described it. Two doors were set on the wall across from them and Trish noted, as the elevator closed behind them, that they were the only two doors listed on the map to be in the basement. There were the stairs, then a small 'L' shaped hallway, and then this oddly shaped alcove with the one elevator and those two rooms.

The hinges on both looked rusted over, causing her to give a very displeased frown before folding up the map yet again.

Down the hallway to the light furthest from them there was a small buzzing and the occasional, very brief flicker--not fully turning off but lowering its brightness and then returning, as if it had been left on for ages and was starting to run out of juice.

Nothing seemed out of order.

Nothing suspicious.

Where was he going with this clue about the Oxydol if, in fact, they hadn't just misunderstood?

"Let's look around a little. He might've hidden something in one of the rooms."

A store room and a boiler room. Those were their options.

Trish wasn't sure just then if, since they were right next to each other, she wanted her and Monika to check one out separately. It might be a good idea for them to do so, but then again, what if leaving Monika alone and going into one of those rooms actually lead her straight to this stalker and then he did who knows what.

No.

Going their separate ways now was too dangerous, and she turned to Monika and nodded her head towards the Store room, the door closest to the wall, one hand tightly on her gun and the other turning the knob.

Monika lifted her shoulders and dipped her neck into a half-shrug half-nod. This was the end of the line. The basement was the only level of Brookhaven left. At the very least, the only place left Monika's energy would allow. All this scrambling about and hiking up and down stairs was making her entire body droop with fatigue: feet all but dragging along the gritty basement floor, arms hanging weakly at her sides.

Monika's last glimpse out a window had done nothing but snuffed her hopes of a possible change in weather. It wouldn't be long before their entire bodies, weary with both physical and mental burdens, would also slow down, begging and pleading for sleep. Just don't think about it right now...

Monika glanced about dully, at what seemed to be the only tiled floors or walls, filthy with grime and dirt and who knew what else. The ceiling bulb, although much more helpful than their previous light source, cast an ugly glare on everything in it's reach. The flicker was only vaguely problematic at the moment, aggravating more their concentration than their line of vision. Monika had, at one time as a sixteen-year-old girl, dared venture into the nefarious confines of a gas station bathroom. That restroom, and only that restroom was the only instance she could think of that came close to the same reaction of disgust she was having now.

The cleanest, least dysfunctional things in the room seemed to be the two of them, so in an attempt to avoid preoccupation with all the sludge about them, Monika concentrated on the back of Trish's hoody for most of their hint hunting.

”Sorry...” Monika moved her gaze back down at her clumsy feet, embarrassed at having stepped on the heel of Trish's shoe for the third time in the past two minutes. ”It's so dark in--......”

Dark?

Why was it dark?

”...in here....” She hadn't even noticed until now, the drastic contrast of lighting from now as opposed to how bright it originally was. It must have gradually dimmed with each flicker. Monika figured they had probably no longer than ten minutes or so. ”The light's going out,” she said in an almost amazed, unbelieving way.

Needless to say, the whole basement ordeal proved to be quite a disappointment, bearing only the rewards of dirty shoes, an old, cracked lighter they found almost underneath one of the whistling tanks in the boiler room (working, surprisingly enough), and as an added bonus for Trish, sore heels.

Monika blinked dully and gave her friend a confused look. ”Did you just whisper something?”

Trish gave Monika a look of confusion at the question, but her ears picked up something that time.

It was like a whisper... a whisper of a human that was too far off and mumbling so that you couldn't understand a word of it.

She kept her concentration up, holding an arm out in front of Monika to keep her still and silent, not wanting to bring attention to themselves or miss out of figuring out who or what was maybe down there with them now. Another. But no more knowledge came from it--until there was a small clack against the tiles, so far back as towards the stairs.

It truly had gotten darker; the light was beginning to fizzle and it was too hard to see, from their distance, just what was standing in front of the steps from around the corner.

Flick.

Flick.

Dead.

The light stopped entirely and Trish whipped the cell phone out faster than she could blink, opening it up and shining it down the hall. There didn't appear to be anything there, until yet another whisper graced their ears, followed promptly by a low, gravely sounding snarl. It was a sound reminiscent of some one trying to gather enough saliva for a spit mixed with an old, grumbling dog and the muddled whispers they had been hearing before. To add to the delightfulness of the sound, there seemed to be a small dripping noise that got less and less confined, as if moving into the open hallway.

What came from the shadows into the small square of dim light did, indeed, appear to be a dog; a large, thin, stray, beat up dog with a torn neck (which appeared to be wrapped in a collar either made of chains or barbed wire) and a wide open mouth. Its face wasn't turned directly to them, more so looking at the beam of light as it glowed from the wall.

There was a noticeable foam around the dog's mouth which triggered one thought in Trish's mind immediately.

Rabies.

Slowly it turned, and as if a cue, the light from the cell phone blinked off and Trish had to press a button on it quickly for it to resume illuminating their way.

Its face was bloody, most of it dried into the fur it seemed, and it all looked as though it was coming from its eyes, which were too covered in the stuff to see what exactly the problem was with it. Now that she could see a bit better, squinting a little to help, the barbed wire from the collar twisted up and pierced through the sides of its mouth, bringing it up into a frightening Joker-like smile, showing off some of the most horrific teeth she had ever seen on a dog.

More like shark's teeth.

The fur and skin around its neck was peeling, and as it stepped further into the hallway, moving slowly, almost slinking over, it became apparent that, actually, a great deal of its skin was peeling off, almost like ribbons.

What had this dog gone through?

That sound again, it tilted its head a little, looking like it was attempting to snap its jaws at them but to no avail and just uttered a gurgling growl that sent chills up their spines. For each step the dog took, they took two back until they were up against the wall of the alcove. It limped towards them with reserved intensity, getting closer and closer until there was only one thing to do.

Slowly, very slowly, Trish moved the cell phone across herself, into the other hand, and held it in front of Monika for her to take. The dogs head followed the cell phone, as if the light were its true objective, and as it seemed distracted, Trish sped up a bit, pulling out her gun and aiming carefully, right at the side of its head.

BANG.

The beast staggered and fell to the floor with a noise so similar to a man vomiting that Trish gagged herself. It writhed and kicked and tried to bring itself back up despite the bullet in its skull and the river of blood beginning to surround its upper section. She crept closer and chanced another shot, this one at the ribs. At the heart.

Weaker, though its legs still moved about, twitching, convulsing. In a fit of fear and anger Trish let loose a rough kick to the top of its skull and, with another vomiting yelp, it ceased movement.

Monika's mouth hung open in a rounded triangle of a gape. Dead. One instance she was going to be eaten by a dog, and the next Trish was kicking it in the head. Try as she might (although at the moment, she wasn't trying very hard), Monika couldn't rememeber exactly what happened.

Just one more thought: I'm going to die. And the noise. That awful wheezing underlayed with people's voices--people's whispers--at first, then the gagging.

Then nothing. Dead as a doornail. In it's own grotesque way, it was already dead--dying, at any rate. The two bullets and sharp kick merely eased it along it's full way. Monika closed her eyes, not wanting to see anything at all. Not the dog; not Trish's brutality toward it; not even the dark.

"Trish," her voice came up suddenly, as if she herself were about to throw up. "W-we..... let's leave. Please, let's leave, Trish, I hate it here. Please."

The dog was the last straw for the both of them. Ian or not, they weren't about to put their lives on a thinner, less reliabe line than it already was. Or so they thought.

It was Trish, ever-keen and ever-aware who had noticed it first. A huge raw, leather tarp hangingly tautly across the wall the stray had just backed them up against not a minute earlier; or rather, they were almost absolutely sure it had been a wall. The way it seemed to drape closer to the top (the actual top was invisible to the limited lighting of the phone screen) suggested that there was no hard surface at all behind the material.

And unlike everything else they had found so far in the basement, it was not flimsy, and not teetering on the edge of ceasing to exist. In actuality, the thing was quite strong, and quite rooted in it's place.

This obstacle, of course, was perfect fuel for Trish's curiosity and her previous mutuality of leaving Brookhaven, not thirty seconds since it had been promised, flickered and snubbed out, just like the basement light.

After some more half-hearted protesting on Monika's end, she finally gave up in frustration, instead giving her pounding heart a chance to relax while watching tiredly as her friend attempted to battle the seemingly invincible tarp.

Trish tried ripping it, scratching it, pulling it, and even setting fire to it, all to absolutely no avail. The lighter had left a little black mark on the smooth surface, but the flame died too quickly to do any extensive damage.

It only took them an impressive eight minutes or so to put one and one together, and finally recognize the Oxydol's purpose. Fire needed oxygen to survive, and as a nurse, Monika knew that their 'medical alcohol' did, in fact, produce oxygen when applied to an open wound.

Only, they had no open wounds readily available.

The dog would have to do.