Lend a Helping Hand Page 4

  “That’s too weird,” I said and looked up at the stars.

  I glanced up and saw something I couldn’t rectify. The new night sky was full of stars, but they weren’t our stars. I’d studied the sky extensively for rituals, and I knew the constellations I was looking at weren’t part of the night sky in my world.

  “Look up,” I said.

  Grim moved his head slowly up and looked at the sky. “What?” he asked, but then a second later he said, “Oh. I see.”

  I turned around a little and noticed something that immediately took my breath away. Not only were there two moons, but one of them was a shade of pale pink.

  “There are two moons here,” I said.

  “Yep, there are sure are,” Grim said. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

  “Should we step back outside and see if it’s still daylight?” I asked. “It might be good to know what we’re dealing with.”

  “I don’t know that going back and forth in this is safe, but perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to poke your head out,” Grim said.

  “Okay,” I said and turned to the gate.

  The only problem was that the gate wouldn’t open. I pulled on it hard, but it was as if it was frozen in place. I couldn’t even rattle it.

  “Shoot,” I said. “I think we’re trapped.”

  “Maybe together we can use magic to get out,” Grim said.

  He joined me and I got ready to hit the gate with a spell to remove whatever spell was holding it shut. That’s when another scream rang out through the dark. It sent a chill down my spine.

  “I’m going into the building,” I said. “I’m not risking leaving her here.”

  I didn’t wait for his answer, but instead turned on my heels and began to march toward the old stone fortress. “Wait,” he said.

  “No,” was my response. “No waiting. We go in now.”

  Inside of a minute I’d crossed the distance between the gate and the entrance of the asylum. The front doors loomed up at the top of the concrete stairs. They were heavy and made of solid oak, but time had made one of them hang slightly off its hinges.

  It was enough of an opening for me to get through. I gripped the edge of the crooked door and pulled it out. A loud creaking noise broke up the sound of crickets. When had crickets begun to chirp?

  I shook off that thought and pried the door open enough to squeeze through and held it while Grim followed me in. I’d thought about closing it behind me, but I left the door ajar. It seemed like it was a good idea to leave it in case we needed to make a hasty exit from the building.

  Inside was darker than I’d thought possible. Even with two moons shining outside, no light streamed through the open door. The air was thick and full of dust. It almost made it difficult to breathe, but I did my best to stay calm.

  We needed light, so I held up a hand and conjured a light orb. Grim did the same thing.

  “Which direction should we go?” he asked as our little balls of light danced before us. “I don’t know that it matters either way.”

  At first, I didn’t understand what he’d said, but then I started to figure out what he’d meant. No matter what direction we walked, we wouldn’t be going the direction we thought. We’d go wherever the entities in that place wanted us to go. It was a difficult thing for me to surrender my power that way, but it had to be done. I just hoped that there were some good spirits in the asylum to guide us as well.

  “Goddess protect us,” I said before I began my trip down the hallway to my right.

  Something about the place reminded me of a school. We were walking past administrative office doors on either side of us, and in my mind’s eye, I could almost see lockers lining the walls on either side. They weren’t really there, and I attributed the notion to my own nightmares about high school.

  “Be careful,” I said to Grim. “I think there is something here that wants to use our anxieties and fears against us.”

  “It’s a good thing I’m not afraid of much,” Grim said with a chuckle, but I could hear the edge of uncertainty in his voice. “You need to remember that we are the thing to be afraid of in the dark, Zoe. Don’t let them rob you of your confidence.”

  With that, I straightened up and squared my shoulders. He was right. My friend was missing, and whatever had her needed to be afraid of me. I didn’t know how I’d let myself become convinced it was the other way around, but Grim had set me straight.

  We were almost to the stairwell at the end of the hall when I heard a sound from inside one of the offices. The door to the room was closed, and the large window in the door was completely clouded over with dust and who knows what else. I could barely make out what was on the other side of the door let alone see what was in there.

  At first it sounded like a breeze blowing papers around on a desk. It took me a moment to realize that not only was there no breeze but that there couldn’t be any papers on a desk after all this time. It seemed impossible that after decades anything left behind would have been completely cleared out by nature and the kids who used to trespass in the asylum.

  But, perhaps something had survived. I accepted that right about the time that the sound transformed from papers rustling to what reminded me of feet shuffling. Then it was footsteps coming toward the door.

  It hadn’t been the sound of papers but the noise made when a person stands up from a bed of dried leaves and dust. When I looked at the office door, I could swear I saw the shadows of feet.

  “There’s something on the other side of that door,” I said quietly. “Or someone.”

  Grim opened his mouth to speak when the knob started to turn. It made a loud squeak as someone on the other side turned it back and forth, but the door did not open. It continued to noisily turn back and forth for a few seconds before it began to shake as if the person had gotten frustrated.

  The door still didn’t open, but grunts and growls emerged from the room. The knob stopped shaking and turning, and whatever it was began to scratch at the door. The fingernails raking down the door sent a chill down my spine.

  “Maybe it’s just an animal.” Grim offered.

  “An animal that was turning the knob?”

  “We should go in,” he said.

  “That sounds like a terrible idea,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat.

  All of my previous hubris had drained away at the prospect of finding out what was on the other side of that door. I took a deep breath and reminded myself of what Grim had said. We were far more powerful than whatever horror hid in the darkened office. At least, I hoped we were.

  “You want me to go first?” Grim asked.

  “No, I’ll do it.”

  The scratching stopped abruptly as I reached for the doorknob. Any doubt that the thing on the other side knew we were there vanished. Not only did it know we were there, it was waiting for us.

  I heard it take a step back from the door as it welcomed me in. A half second later, it shuffled back again. I could see its shadow getting further from the door. Cold leaked out of the room in the space between the bottom of the door and the floor. I wondered if a window was broken inside, but I couldn’t recall it feeling so chilly when we were outside. A broken window could have explained the things I’d heard, though. The wind blowing into the office could have rustled some leaves on the floor, and the thing that I interpreted as the shadow of a person standing on the other side of the door could have been a tree or something shifting in the light of the two moons.

  A plausible explanation, no matter how thin, emboldened me to open the door. The creaking sound from the hinges resounded through the dark hall.

  At first the door would only open an inch or so. It felt like something was on the other side holding it shut. I cast a protection spell into the room through the small opening and then put my other hand on the door. With the force of my magic behind me, I shoved the door with all of my strength.

  It gave way and swung open so fast that I fell forward and stumbled in
to the room clumsily. “I should have seen that coming,” I said and straightened myself out.

  I looked around the room and sighed. There was nothing there. No one was on the other side of the door unless they’d fled out the completely closed and not at all broken window.

  That was when I heard it again, only this time, the shuffling sound came from what I assumed was the office’s closet door. Annoyance rose up in my gut instead of fear.

  “I’ve had about enough of this,” I said and marched across the empty room to the door. “I’m coming in and you better hope you’re big and scary because you’ve done gone and ticked me off.”

  “Zoe,” Grim’s voice was edged with concern. “Best not to taunt them.”

  “Best not to taunt who?” I asked. “It’s not like we even know what we’re dealing with here. It could just be a prankster spirit distracting us from finding my friend.”

  “You’re right,” Grim said. “We don’t know what it is. It could be something far worse than a prankster spirit.”

  “Then it needs to stop playing childish games.” I reached out for the doorknob on the closet.

  When I turned it, nothing happened. I shook it a little, and it occurred to me that I was doing exactly what the entity had been doing to me moments ago in the hallway. Was I just seeing a projection of my own future? That would have explained a great deal, and it would mean that we weren’t dealing with anything too sinister.

  “Enough,” I said and used a jolt of energy to get the door to open.

  As I opened the closet door, the door to the office slammed shut. It scared us both, and we jumped a little. I hurried to the office door and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. Even the bit of magic I’d used to open the other door had no effect.

  Grim and I were both working on getting out of the office when I heard the shuffling sound again. This time it came from the closet. I turned around to look, and all I could see was pitch black. The closet was so dark that you couldn’t see in. Not even the moonlight penetrated it, but it should have.

  I stood and stared at it for a moment while Grim tried to open the door to get us out. He turned for a moment and looked over his shoulder. It was his gasp of fright that turned my attention back to the closet.

  At first all I could see was the white outline of something emerging from the darkness. As it took shape, I realized that it was a person.

  That was wrong. It wasn’t a person. The thing was vaguely human shaped with a body, head, arms and legs, but it didn’t move like a human. The shuffling or rustling sound was it sort of dragging its feet across the dusty floor.

  It moved so slowly, but I could feel the air around me grow heavier as it approached. The moonlight grew dimmer in the room as the thing got closer to me.

  As it emerged, its features became clearer. On its head were tendrils of inky black mist in the place of hair. The tendrils moved and swayed as if they were alive or maybe it looked like the thing was moving through water.

  I wasn’t quite sure. I couldn’t focus on its tentacle hair as my eyes wandered down to what was supposed to be its face. There were creases in its forehead as if it were very old, and the skin was dry and looked like it was covered in flaky white paint.

  Below that were its eyes. But, that’s not quite right. They weren’t eyes at all. There were two black chasms where you would expect eyes, and when I looked at them for a moment too long, it felt like I began to fall.

  “Zoe,” Grim exclaimed and his voice saved me from tumbling into oblivion.

  There was no nose but instead were two smaller circles as if it had a nose but it had been chopped off. Below that was its mouth, and the thing definitely had a mouth. Its lips were brittle and chapped, but the wide opening barely concealed rows of razor-sharp teeth.

  I took a step back as it shuffled toward me. When I looked over, Grimm was watching in horrified fascination.

  No, he wasn’t watching. I’d misinterpreted. When the thing made it completely out of the closet, Grim darted behind it and slammed the door shut.

  He scurried back across the room and his plan worked. The office door opened, and we ran out. As we did, all of the other office doors on the floor flew open and things just like the one we were trapped with dragged themselves out.

  There were at least a dozen of them all moving in our direction. They began to moan in unison like some terrible funeral dirge.

  Our only way out was up. The door to the stairwell was right behind us and there was no fiend coming out of it.

  “Let’s go,” I said and dove for the stairwell door.

  I almost cried out with relief when it opened. Grim and I hurried through it and I closed it behind us. After I picked him up, we turned and looked through the narrow window that let us see out into the hallway.

  They were coming for us. I looked around for something to block the door. I didn’t know if the things could even use a doorknob, but I didn’t want to take the chance.

  There was nothing to help us. It was an empty corridor with a staircase up to the next floor and that was it. Even the fire ax that was supposed to be in a case next to the door had long ago been stolen.

  “That would have come in handy,” I said as I ran my fingertips over the ancient sign that simply said fire ax. “What are we going to do?”

  “I think we should just go up the stairs and hope those things aren’t coordinated enough to follow,” Grim said. “I’ll put a ward on this door and hope it stops them or at least slows them down.”

  While he did that, I walked up the stairs to the next riser to see what was up there. A second later, Grim appeared at my side.

  “Let’s keep going,” he said.

  Just then, an apparition appeared on the steps in front of us. She was dressed in old clothes, like something you would have seen in a history book on the pilgrims or the Quakers. I wasn’t sure which one or if they were the same thing in that moment. She’d taken me by surprise. Heck, she could have been Amish, but whatever she was, she’d set my heart thundering.

  “Didn’t mean to scare you, Zoe,” she said with a small smile.

  Her visage was mostly see-through, but the apparition felt familiar. I had no idea who she was, and yet she seemed like someone close to me. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and before I had the chance to contemplate it more, she spoke again.

  “You need to keep moving. Come up to the third floor and follow me. I’ll try to lead you to the attic. That’s where you’ll find her.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Should we really?” Grim asked. “Maybe this place is trying a new method to lead us to our doom. When the scary devil woman Kraken-haired things didn’t get us, it sent this pleasant-looking ghost.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “We can trust her. I don’t know how I know, but my intuition isn’t lying about her.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  She smiled again and then turned and drifted the rest of the way up the stairs to the third floor. “My name is Chastity,” she said right before drifting through the door.

  I turned the knob and pushed it open. Grim followed me through the doorway, and we stopped just inside because Chastity had stopped.

  The third floor wasn’t offices, but I hadn’t expected that it would be. It was lined on either side with doors, and they were so close together. The patient rooms were small. They made closets look big, in fact.

  “It wasn’t always like this,” she said as she drifted a few feet before stopping again. “At one time this place was one of the best in the nation in it’ treatment of patients, but something happened. Darkness needled its way in and it acted as a beacon to those who would exploit the vulnerable for money. Renovations occurred for decades and every time the patient rooms got smaller and smaller. I was long gone for it, but I was still here.”

  I understood what she’d meant. Chastity had been dead when corrupt administrators had taken over Blackwell Rock Asylum, but she’d watched from her place in between worlds as t
he asylum was remodeled to squeeze more and more patients into the space.

  “Of course, I wasn’t here for the time that it was good for patients either,” she said with a chuckle. “I watched that from afar too. No, when I was here, this place was just cabins and fields with a fence around it so we couldn’t leave, of course. Not that we could have left. We’d have had nowhere to go. It was a poor farm and asylum at that time. Half of us were here because we were destitute and vulnerable. The other half, like me, were here because we were insane.” That part was followed by a laugh too.

  “You weren’t really insane, were you?”

  “There were a lot of reasons a woman was declared insane in the past, Zoe. In many cases it was because their husbands had mistresses and didn’t want them around anymore. Sometimes it was because they read too many books or read books at all. Others, it was because they were believed to be consorting with the devil and our society was a few decades past when it was okay to hang them or burn them. So they were judged insane and sent here to work. Sound bodies could still slave the day away even when the mind was judged too fragile to function in polite society.”

  It was then that I realized she wasn’t dressed like a pilgrim or a Quaker really. Her dress was just plain and brown. It was probably the uniform at the asylum when she’d lived here. The old building had become her stomping grounds after it had been built. The cabin she’d lived in had long since been torn down and replaced with the more modern buildings. I couldn’t help but wonder what it was like to be stuck here and watch everything change for over a hundred years.

  “I tried to help them,” she said softly after stopping again. “Sometimes they would listen, and sometimes they wouldn’t.”

  I had to wonder if she was talking about the teenager who died. Maybe the boys they’d found at the gates that morning had accepted her help.

  I noticed that Chastity hadn’t started moving again. She was still but her visage flickered a little. It shook as if someone was stomping on the ground she stood. If she’d stood on any ground, that was.