The doctor, one of the newer plastic surgeons at Cashmere Hospital, looked a little sheepish as he approached my desk. I had only seen him a few times, and he had never spoken to me directly. He was a vain fellow in the same vein as a few of the other hotshot docks around the ER, but today, he looked rattled. His hair was unkempt, his clothing looked dirty, and he was glancing around in that way that made me think he might be being followed.
“Are you the one who collects the stories?” he asked.
I looked around, not sure if he was hiding from someone, before telling him that I was.
“Carl said you would understand. I don’t know what happened to me, but he told me that you might be able to help me make sense of it. I know you’re at work, but do you have a minute to talk?”
It was currently about ten o’clock and I was in the middle of a lull in activity. The real work wouldn’t be possible until after they called for visitors to leave, so I pushed out a chair and pulled out a notepad. I had started carrying it religiously, the stories becoming habitual, and I wanted to get all the information while it was fresh.
His name was Doctor Gary Long, and he had experienced something I had only heard about once before.
The more he talked, the more I realized he was talking about the creatures that had taken up residents in the forbidden corridor over in the East Wing Record Messineen.
* * * * *
I've only been working at Cashmere Hospital for a couple of months, but I had heard all the rumors. Doctor Logan still tells people about what happened to him in the elevator, people talk about the ghost girl in the South Wing that jumps from the fifth-story balcony, and everyone, nurses and doctors alike, knows that if you stay in the OR too late, you might run into Shaky Leg Mary. I listened, but I privately thought they were nothing but stories. It was just talk, every hospital has them, but Cashmere Hospital has a bit of a reputation. Even in Med School, the students knew about the weirdness that surrounds the hospital, and when my friends heard I had accepted an offer to work there, they joked that I was gonna get taken away by some ghost one night.
Well, I don’t think it was a ghost that tried to get me.
Ghosts don’t do what this thing did.
It was late when I got done with my case. I had dressed out and was leaving to get my car from the garage. This may sound silly, but I always park my car at the bottom of the car park. It's a two thousand twenty-one Mercedes that I’m still likely to be paying off when I’m forty, but doctors are expected to maintain a certain air of affluents. Fancy watches, big houses, shiny cars, it all gives off the illusion of wealth while most of us are drowning in student loans and credit card debt. The car was a frivolity that I couldn’t really afford, but I was trying and mostly succeeding at keeping my head above water.
So when I took the elevator down to the fifth-floor basement of the car park and found nothing but empty spots, I was shocked.
I had parked it in the third spot on the left side and now it was gone.
There were no other cars down there, either, so I could only assume that someone had either stolen it or it had been towed for some reason.
I was grumbling when I climbed back into the elevator, but I felt confident that this could be solved in short order. If it had been stolen, then my insurance would get me a rental car until the police found it. The car was insured, insured for quite a lot, and I had little doubt that the premiums would buy me another one if it had been taken. If the hospital had my car towed, then THEY would get me a rental car or get the impound lot to bring my damn car back.
When the elevator didn’t move after I jabbed the button, my anger flared. I slapped at the buttons, but nothing happened. I picked up the phone and tried to call the switchboard, but there was no tone. The doors didn’t close either, which didn’t seem weird until I thought about it. They just stayed open, and I finally threw the phone at the bank of lit-up buttons and decided to walk out of the garage and find someone to yell at. It had been a long day, I was tired, and all this bullcrap was really starting to make me mad.
I started walking towards the ramp then, and if I’d known what would happen later, I think I’d have just stayed in the elevator.
The next floor up was empty too, and I wondered how later it was before my watch told me it was barely nine. Most of the other employees were probably just lazy and didn’t want to drive all the way back up. They didn’t care if people dinged their cars, and I figured I would see more cars as I went up. It was comfortable enough down there, the concrete box creating a cave of sorts, and the fluorescents overhead hummed with insectile good cheer. Other than the hum, my footfalls seemed to be the only noise. The constant tock tock tock of my sneakers was monotonous but it was also a little nice to know I hadn’t just gone deaf. There really wasn’t any other sound down there, and as I came to the third floor, I was surprised that there still wasn’t a window to the outside.
The first two levels I had come through were basements, but surely this one should be on ground level, right?
This floor was when I started to notice the plants, as well. They were palmettos, I think, and they sprouted up from the concrete in places. The fronds looked pokey and I really didn’t want to touch them and find out. I wondered why maintenance or groundskeeping hadn’t done something about them, but it was really none of my business. They were in the corners or out of the way, and they weren’t hurting anything. The Georgia flora had always been a bit invasive sometimes, and seeing plants in a manmade structure wasn’t anything uncommon.
That was the first time I felt something watching me too.
The first time I heard something other than the lights humming or the scuff of my shoes.
I was coming up the ramp and onto the second floor, when I heard something scrub against the concrete. It was a low sound, like fingernails, but when I turned, there was nothing there. The concrete parking structure was still empty and it was becoming odd that I hadn’t seen any cars or people. A dozen others, nurses and techs, had been in the surgery with me, and to have seen absolutely none of their vehicles was strange. I was coming to the levels just beneath the entrance ramp. Why hadn’t I seen anyone yet?
As the phantom eyes bore a hole between my shoulder blades, I picked up the pace.
I wanted to be out of here, and my anger was beginning to subside as the creeping chill of fear sent icy fingers through it.
The next floor should have definitely been at ground level, but it was the same bland box that the others had been. There were no cars, no people, but the plants had gotten thicker. They were looking more like jungle plants now, and the cool cave was becoming a little humid. I saw vines hanging from the ceiling, and they seemed to be coming right out of the concrete. Why hadn’t I ever noticed any of this before? Its presence did little to soothe me, and when I heard a crunch from behind me, I quickened my pace again.
I could still hear that low noise behind me. I wasn’t as alone as I thought. It felt like something was stalking me, and as I ran up the next ramp, I almost cried out when it was more of the same. The plants were getting thicker, and the concrete seemed to be giving way to dirt in places. I was running now, my feet carrying me onward as my brain began to scream at me that we were trapped. I stumbled, but I caught myself before I fell, and glanced back to make sure nothing was chasing me.
I don’t know how, but I knew that if I fell, that would be the end of me.
I had gone higher than the parking deck could possibly be, five floors higher than the roof when the lights suddenly went out.
I don't mean the lights flickered, I don’t mean they just sort of dimmed, I mean that suddenly, I was something akin to blind.
As I stood still in the blackness, I could hear them again.
They sounded like animals, walking around on all fours as their claws scrape across the ground. I had thought there was only one, but the longer I listened, the more I thought it might be two, or three, or as many as six. They were searching for me, stalking me through the murk, and I didn’t dare move. Something in the instinctual part of my brain told me that, if I moved, they would know where I was. It told me to stand as still as I could and not to make a sound as they hunted for me. They searched, they sniffed, but eventually, I heard them moving away, and that was when I made my escape.
I ran like my life depended on it, and maybe it did.
They heard me sooner than I would have thought, and I tore off in the general direction of the next ramp. The layout of the parking structure was pretty uniform, and I knew that if I just kept moving in a circle, I could get to the next floor. Something in me screamed that if I could get out of here, that if I could get free of whatever loop I was in, I could lose these creatures and be done with this madness.
Their claws sounded huge as they ate up the ground. They made little huffing noises as they ran, and I couldn’t imagine what they must look like. I think I settled on a pack of panthers that had come to get me, and when I suddenly ran into a concrete wall, I just knew they were about to rip me to shreds. It turned out to be for the best, however. As I lay there, trying to see if my nose was broken, something hit the wall I had run into with a loud and angry yowl. It hit it hard enough to send concrete chips cascading over me, and I put a hand over my mouth as I lay completely silent on the dusty concrete.
It picked itself up and shook off whatever damage the wall had done to it before snuffling the air soupily. It was looking for me, and I did not want to be found. I could feel its bulk as it came close, smell the rancid meat that must lay beneath those claws, and I hoped that it couldn’t hear me trembling. I expected that every breath would be my last, and the thought that I would die as I took shallow, half-breaths was depressing.
Some indeterminable amount of time later, the creature moved away, and I got up as quietly as I could and tiptoed for the wall. I had misjudged the circle I was making, and when I found the edge, I headed up the ramp and kept climbing. Something was different now, I could feel it, and when my light-deprived eyes began to adjust to the intrusion of light, I knew I was getting close to the surface. As my hope came back, I started running again, and that's when I heard them behind me. I came up and I saw the crossbar and little booth that told me the front of the parking deck was in sight.
I put on a burst of speed, and when I ducked under the arm, I heard somethings claws rake across the wood.
I fell onto the asphalt and looked back in time to see a sold black creature with a head like a spade. Its body looked like it was covered in scales instead of fur, and teeth that hung from that mouth looked painful large. It had no eyes, but it pointed its spade-shaped head in my direction and seemed to know where I was. Despite the small burn of the moon and the distant islands of the security lights, the creature was still unwilling to come out and get me.
It slunk back into the parking structure, and I sighed in relief.
I screamed in surprise when I heard footsteps coming towards me, but it was just Carl.
He had been smoking by the parking deck, and when he heard me running out, he came to investigate. I told him about the creatures, and he only shrugged like this was just one more thing on his plate. He offered to go get my car for me, and when I asked him if he wasn’t afraid of the things down there, he said it was nothing new. “Stuff like that happens all the time,” he said and told me to go wait for him in the front lobby.
“There's a guy there who I think will want to talk to you. I have a feeling he knows just what you're talking about.”
* * * * * *
The Mercedes in question came rolling up about that point and Doctor Long seemed relieved.
I finished my notes, but I could feel him staring in much the way he had described the creatures staring at him.
“So, have you ever heard of anything like that before?”
“Yeah, it's not the first time. If it happens again, just stay in the elevator until it stops. The hospital is like a strange kind of waiting room all its own. Sometimes you slip into places that you aren’t prepared for, and it's best to just wait until reality reasserts itself.”
“I don’t think I’ll be parking in that structure again. I’ll take my chances in staff parking. A few dings on the door is a small price to pay for peace of mind.”
He thanked me before leaving, and I transcribed his notes into the pdf I was keeping for the weird things that happen around here.
Eventually, we all slip into that strange other room just beyond the waiting room, and if you're lucky, you get to slip back out again too.
Doctor Long was lucky, but he may not get so lucky a second time.
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