Lunatic

[Ella]

Peter’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment as relief swept over him. Finally the girl was listening to him. In this dark and dirty room, he was feeling less and less patient and progressively more impulsive. He wasn’t sure what tactics he would have resorted to in order to get her out of the building with him. His relief was short-lived, however, as she began to scream about what he assumed to be more monsters. He prayed that these were figments of the poor girl’s imagination, but clicking noises in the hallway made his heart jump into his throat.
He didn’t have long to react. He relied purely on his instincts and pushed his senses to the max as he swooped toward the girl, using her grip on his arm to fold her up into his arms like a baby. She weighed next to nothing, and he could feel her warm blood against his arm and torso as he cradled her. For a moment, the screeching noise from the hallway combined with the girl’s frantic wailing made Pete cringe, and he leaned his head forward. His forehead pressed against the girls, and he mentally pleaded with her to stop while he tried to figure out how he was getting out of this situation. His hands were full in clutching her, so he couldn’t pull out his gun after having put it away in order to avoid frightening her moments before. Calvin’s flashlight was tucked into his back pocket.
“Shhh,” he whispered into her ear, “Calm down for a moment, we need to be very, very quiet.” He moved himself backward, pressing against the wall next to the doorway. The noise was getting louder. He used his chin to press on the top of her head, urging her to tuck her face into his shoulder. “Don’t look, don’t speak.” He kept them in the shadows, praying to God the monsters in the halls would overlook them.
Imogen whimpered, but did as she was told. Her whole body was shaking against his –it was pitiful, really. How had she survived in this place in her state? His grip on her tightened slightly as the creatures stopped just outside. Pete turned his head and watched as two… abominations only Hell could have produced clammered into the room. Imogen’s description had not been far off. The monsters stood upon four massive blades protruding from stumps that must have once been their limbs. Two heads, not completely symmetrical, grew from each creature and twisted and turned as they scanned the room. They bore masks with a variety of tubes, and Peter had to wonder if they could truly see. They didn’t notice them, somehow, and he watched as they clomped through the mess that had once been Calvin. Their blades made the blood and innards splatter more across the floor, and they did one last clumsy dance around the room before turning around and guiding each other back out the door, slowly but with purpose.
He looked down quickly to assure that Imogen’s face was still buried in his jacket before turning toward the door and sneaking around it, making sure the monsters were gone before going the direction in which they’d come. He speed-walked, planning to get to a place with natural light coming in from windows at the very least. He tried to retrace the steps he’d taken with Calvin earlier, from the main door. The trek felt as if it took hours, though it did take long enough that most of Immy’s blood dried on his shirt.
When they reached the front door, Peter found it bound with massive chains and a lock the size of his fist. That hadn’t been there when they’d come in. “Fucking God dammit!” he cussed, coming to a stop, still holding the girl.

[Tiara]

Timidly, Immy poked her head up, though she was reluctant to do so. It had been so long since she felt the least bit safe, and his arms felt so warm and strong. But not strong in a way that he would hurt her, strong so that she felt protected. And he smelled so nice.

How long had it been since Immy had smelled something other than mildew, blood, and human waste?

"It was the Toys, wasn't it?" she asked, searching Peter's strong face.

"The toys?"

"They walk around on stilts because the doctor cut off their arms and legs, and they wear those masks," Immy explained. "They remind me of the baby head that was attached to the spider legs on Toy Story."

Peter furrowed his brow. "How old are you Immy? You look so young..."

The question felt foreign to Immy. Age didn't matter here. And it was so long ago that she even thought about her self as being old or young. The last Immy could remember, she'd been fourteen- no fifteen! Yes, she'd been fifteen years old. She had a pimple on her cheek that felt like Jupiter on her chin.

But now it was gone. She was no longer fifteen.

"I think-" Immy bit her lip, and scratched at her scalp. "I was fifteen. I had a pink backpack, and I was going to school. I kept that backpack for a long time after I came here. I finished all my homework, and even the extra credit.
But that was a long time ago. Now the backpack is gone, and so are my babies..." A look of deep sadness filled Imogen's dark eyes. "I have to find my baby. Please help me find her," she begged, clutching at Peter's collar.

[Ella]

She’d given them a nickname? The way she called the creatures toys was unnerving, and begged the question of how young she truly was. She looked so innocent, but something told him she was no child.
Fifteen. That stood out to Pete. There weren’t a lot of children who’d gone missing in relation to this case. He furrowed his brows and pictured himself back in his office, dozens of folders splayed out in front of him. Who was she? Which folder, paper worn thin from age and years of analyzing and storage, was hers? He listened to her description of herself when she was taken away from real life, and it came flooding back to him. The story of the young girl taken away on an unsuspecting, sunny morning. It went against all stereotypical rules of kidnapping. Some people theorized she’d run away, but her family insisted she’d never do such a thing. She was a happy kid and a straight A student.
Hers was a ten year-old file.
Her eyes were full of desperation as she clung to him, and Peter closed his eyes, shaking his head. “No, Imogen, we need to get you home. You’re hurt, see?” He looked down at her bloody pelvic region.
“It’s not safe for you here. Your family misses you. I’ll…” He searched for fake sincerity. “I’ll send some of my team back here to find your… babies.” If there were truly infants somewhere within the asylum, surrounded by monstrous creatures and darkness, they wouldn’t still be alive. He wouldn’t risk any more of his fellow officers.

[Tiara]

Suggested Track: Closer by The Tiny

Tears brimmed in Imogen's dark eyes, and she felt them burning in the back of her nose. "My-my family?" She whispered. "Do you know my daddy? He was strong like you, and he tried to keep me safe. But he couldn't." She buried her head in the tender space where Peter's neck met his shoulders. "I thought he was so handsome when he smiled at me..."

"Who is he, Imogen? Your father? Is your father here? Did he do this to you?" Peter asked, frantically.

Squeezing her emaciated arms around Peter's neck, she shock her head. "No. Daddy loved me- loves me."

"Then who? Tell me who!"

Immy tensed up, and tried to make herself smaller. "Tux," she whispered, barely audible. "Please don't let him get me again. He says I'm pretty and he loves, but then he hurts me. I don't want him to hurt me anymore!"

Memories of sitting beside him in the pack on that day. He held her hand, and smiled at her. When he'd kissed her, Immy hadn't noticed his funny smell.

He smelled like here. Like Hell.

[Ella]

She was squeezing him like an overly excited child, but the words coming out of her mouth made Peter sick. They plucked at his heart strings, and he couldn’t begin to fathom the pain this tiny woman must have endured. Calvin would have laughed at Pete finally showing real emotion. His face was hard, but he wanted nothing more but to sweep her out of the asylum they were trapped in.
“Tux…” he repeated, looking behind him at the many hallways that branched out of the room they were in. Was this the man behind the creatures here? Was he still in the building? There were too many unanswered questions, too many ‘what ifs’, and he had the uncomfortable sensation of being vulnerable, as if being hunted.
This ‘Tux’ character must have raped her, Peter realized, and the fury built up within him like a growing flame. “He’s not going to hurt you anymore, Immy,” Pete told her, looking around the room in deliberation. He spotted a map nearby, and carried her toward it. He needed her small knowledge of the building in order to find the keys to get through the locked chains.
“We need to get to the main office, can you point it out to me?” he asked as calmly as he could, scanning the map himself.

[Tiara]

Looking carefully at the water stained map of the building, Immy realized someone had torn almost half of it away. Even still, Immy had never been to almost any of the rooms she saw before. There were so many. Too many.

She squinted in the minimal light. "The front doors are there," she said, pointing to the small drawing. "Um. Maybe the superin- superintend," she sputtered, trying to pronounce the word superintendent.

"Superintendent's office?" Peter filled in for her.

Immy nodded her head. "Mhmm." She moved her finger with it's broken, dirty fingernail along the hallway. "We should go that way."

[Ella]

Her hands were tiny, blood-stained and boney. Peter’s forehead creased as he frowned, but he nodded as she suggested the superintendent’s office. His eyes followed her finger down the sketched out hallway, and he made a small ‘Hmm’ noise that grumbled in his wide chest. Looking around, he spotted a lone wheelchair nearby. There were tears and holes in the fabric, and the handles were caked with rust, but Peter knew his arms would eventually begin to ache, and he knew if something were to happen he couldn’t risk dropping her. He walked over to it and gently rested her inside it. The wheelchair only accentuated her small size. Sighing, Pete pulled his jacket from his shoulders and wrapped it around her. It enveloped her fragile body, the navy blue contrasting against her dirty, pale skin.
“Point this in front of you, okay?” he told her in a fatherly tone, handing her Calvin’s bloody flashlight. Like the headlights of a car, the beam pointed ahead of her and cast a big shadow behind Peter. He moved around behind her and, with one last glance at the map, began to push her back down the hallway, the opposite direction in which they’d come.
A bang rang out from one of the rooms they moved past, and in a panic Imogen squealed and flicked off the flashlight. It was clear she was used to the darkness and found more comfort in it than confrontation with the monsters she encountered regularly. Peter cursed and forced himself to push forward faster rather than stop and go back. They had no choice to keep moving forward in this place, or else they’d be stuck forever.
“Dammit, Imogen, the light! Turn on the light!” he panted as they whipped around a corner. She gave a sheepish apology and hesitantly flicked the switch back on. All that was illuminated was the long hall before them, and he heard her give a small sigh of relief.

[Tiara]

To Immy, the wheelchair and the flashlight felt like beacons in the dark, signalling all to come and find them. It was a game of hide and seek, but to be sought meant pain and torture. Immy knew this game all too well. There was no place to hide.

There were eyes everywhere.

"Peter?" Immy asked in a whisper, "they'll see us. I know they will."

"It's okay, you'll be fine. Just keep your eyes closed." Peter pushed the wheel chair over to a heavy door. There was a frosted window in it, and once there had been a name, too, but it had been worn away and picked off over the years. "Just hold the flashlight so I can find the keys, and then we'll be outta here."

Immy didn't reply, she just cocked her head.

In the superintendent's office, files and stray papers littered the floor. A chair was turned on it's side, and all of the desk and filing cabinet drawers had been left hanging open like gaping mouths. Dark foot prints, in the shape of men's dress shoes, and another pair of seven digited feet marred the carefully typed papers. They lead around the desk, over to a framed picture left askew, where they suddenly disappeared.

It was so easy for things to disappear here in Hell. Things were lost all the time. Souls, lives, hearts, they could all vanish in the blink of an eye along with an eye or a tongue.

Peter double checked every empty crevice and drawer. He found a tiny key, similar to what would be used on hand cuffs, but nothing that would fit the padlock. "Damn," he swore.

The cold fingers of fear tickled the back of Immy's neck. She clamped her eyes shut as Peter pulled out another drawer hoping to find a secret compartment or maybe a key taped to the bottom.

With both of them distracted, neither noticed the framed picture of Rolling Hills circa 1958 tilt twenty more degrees to the left, or the gnarled, deformed face that peeked out quickly before retreating again.

[Ella]

Peter sighed, leaning forward with his hands resting on the big oak desk. No keys. Absent mindedly, his eyes gazed at the papers scattered on its surface. They seemed to be notes on different experiments performed there at Rolling Hills, ages ago, before its closing. His face crinkled at the morbid description of the doctor’s attempt at changing the eye colour of a patient with heterochromia. It wasn’t news to him –he’d read all about the disturbing tests being run when he was doing his research. Little had he known at the time that the messed up events hadn’t stopped within the walls of the asylum. Peter’s curiosity peaked for a moment, but he shook his head and looked back over at Imogen. What he saw sent shivers down his spine. She had curled in on herself, clamping her eyes shut, and look honestly quite ghostly. He sighed, moving over to her and crouching back down to just below her level. Looking up at her, he tried to be as reassuring as possible.
“I’ll figure something out,” he said, but his voice trailed off and he swallowed his self-doubt. Pushing himself back to his feet, Pete turned the wheelchair around and they left the room.

[Tiara]

Peter's search for the keys continued through the rest of the administration rooms. Immy kept her eyes closed most of the time, especially when she heard the occasional strange sound from the hallway, even if Peter never heard any of them. The only exception was when they found a room marked Telephone Room, and her hopes soared. 

All of the wires had been torn from the walls, smashed to bits, or taken apart. There was one ancient pay phone with an actual dial that advertised calls for 10¢. The accompanying phone book had had most of it's pages ripped out, and what was there was waterlogged. It also looked like someone or something had taken a bite out of the bottom corner. When Peter lifted the receiver, he found the speaker had been hollowed out and two skeleton fingers rigged with wire had been shoved inside. He thew the phone so hard, the receiver hit the pay phone with a loud clang, and jumped back. To his credit, he didn't scream. The fingers waved as the phone swung back and forth. 


Immy thought it was funny, and giggled. 

"Okay, Immy. You know this place," Peter said. "I'm relying on you to help me find the keys. Do you have any other ideas where they could be?"

Immy bit her dry, chapped bottom lip, and thought. If she was a key, an important key, who would have her? Where would she be hid?

Finally, the thought occurred to her. "The Doctor, might," she whispered. She looked suspiciously over her shoulders as if he might jump out from behind her at the sound of his name. "He says the sick need to be made better, so they have to stay here." She cocked her head. "Are you sick, too, Peter? Is that why we're locked in?"

[Ella]

Peter sighed, looking down at his hands for a moment. They were caked in blood -the blood of his partner. Clenching and unclenching his fists, he spoke in a soft tone of defeat. "No, I'm not sick. And neither are you, Immy. You were taken away by a bad man and I am going to get you home, okay?"

He got to his feet and pulled Imogen further into the room before stepping into the hallway to observe their surroundings. He needed to find this man who presumably kidnapped Imogen all those years ago -and the other victims, too, with her in tow. How could he keep her safe while hunting down the man behind her circumstances?

He came back to crouch back down in front of her, and he placed his large hands on the arms of the wheelchair. "Imogen," he started, "I will need your help if we're going to find the Doctor and make him let us go, alright?" He searched her dead, frenzied eyes. "You'll need to be tough for me, okay? And for your baby." It went against everything morally right, but he had to feed into her delusion in order to compel her.