The ride ended soon after. With them turning into the large parking lot of the institution, it took them a second more to see two nurses standing outside the door, waiting for them.
Halting the car to a stop and stepping out, Maurice and Frank headed toward the cobbled steps, right before the main entrance.
"Thank you so much for coming here as quickly as you did," One of the nurses said.
"Who was attacked?" Maurice asked.
"The electrician," the second nurse replied. "We had a power outage in the hospital. So we called an electrician to fix the problem. However, before he could begin, he got attacked."
"Alright..." Maurice replied, jotting down bits and pieces into his notebook. "Where is he now? We'd like to have a word with him."
"Of course, follow us," the first nurse said, heading back inside as she kept the door open for the two police officers. "We're tending to him in the reception."
Already feeling unease from the sheer fact of being in a mental asylum, with the funny smell in the air, as well as the interior being darker than intended, Frank couldn't help but ask, "Tending to him?"
"He got bitten," the second nurse replied. "We're trying to stop the bleeding before getting him to the hospital."
In that, Frank looked at Maurice, who stopped writing, seeming to catch on to the same thing. "Bitten, you say?"
"Yes," the first nurse replied. "It's not uncommon for us to be bitten by our patients... It's happened before. But here, we don't exactly know if it's our patient that's down in the morgue. And if it is, we have no clue how they managed to get there."
Already, Frank felt his stomach bubble with discomfort. His mind ran back to the woman whom they found in the alleyway, then Emily, and finally, the homicide report he began reading. Bite wounds correlated with each case.
And now this.
"And what are your names?" Maurice's voice pulled Frank out of his trance.
"My name is Isabelle Jenkins," the first nurse began. "And this is my colleague, Nurse Genevieve Mayer."
"Alright. Pleasure to meet you both," Maurice replied. "I'm Officer Maurice Peters, and this is my partner, Officer Frank Fallon."
"Likewise," Genevieve responded. "Again, thank you for coming so quickly."
Walking deeper into the building, through the dim lighting, Frank eyed a 3 more nurses ahead, all surrounding a man sitting in a chair. He assumed it was the electrician.
"Good evening, sir," Frank began, taking a seat next to the injured man. "How are you keeping?"
A few waxed candles set on the coffee table and on the reception counter provided some light. However, with the way Frank saw it, the ambience they set only further amplified the ominous tone that the asylum exuded.
"As you can see, I'm not the best... One of those lunatics got me..." At the mention of such, one of the nurses looked at him, judging his choice of words. Picking up on this, the electrician cleared his throat before correcting himself. "A-an intruder attacked me, I'm assuming."
Frank nodded his head. "Alright, I'll begin recording our conversation now, to use it as evidence. Do I have your consent to be in the video?"
The man nodded his head.
"Alright..." Initiating the video recording on his body cam, he continued. "What's your name, sir?"
"Karl Yensin. I'm an electrician by trade."
"Alright, Mr Yensin. Can you briefly explain to me what happened? I'll then have my colleague, Officer Peters, hand you a page for an official statement. The reason we do this is that it's now classified as an assault. Which is a punishable offence."
Karl nodded his head. "Well... I got a call, reporting a power outage here, in the asylum. Having done electrical maintenance here before, I came quickly, assuming it was just a faulty switch. It probably is something like that. Anyway, since the circuits and all are in the basement, close to the morgue, on the way to it actually, I heard some kind of commotion. I didn't give it much thought at first. Afterall, I only came here to do my job. But when I heard it didn't stop... I decided to check what it was. It's a morgue afterall, you're not meant to hear commotion amongst the dead, right? I go in, and the stench hits me. Something wasn't right. But I walk ahead anyway, and before you know it, I'm grabbed... I can still feel the cold grip. Wetness under the fingertips. And then I got bitten..." Karl paused for a moment, looking down toward his left collarbone, before merely peeling the bloodied fabric, moving it aside to reveal the bleeding wound.
"Looks pretty bad," Maurice commented, jotting down the last of the details before fetching a clean page for Karl to fill in. But then, taking another look at the wound, he retracted the page. Getting Karl to the hospital was their priority. He worded his thoughts out loud, "Frank. I really think we should get Mr Yensin to the hospital. I'll contact the paramedics."
"Sounds good," Frank replied, moving his attention back to the electrician. "Is there anything else you'd like to say? Any other detail you noticed?... Did you perhaps happen to see what your attacker looked like?"
He shook his head. "I couldn't see anything beyond my hand. It was quite dark in the basement. I did carry my torch with me, which wasn't the brightest. But when I was grabbed, I dropped it. Only picking it back up after I was bitten. But by then, my priority was to get the fuck out of there. I rushed out of that room, toppling over anything I could just to slow down whoever wanted to kill me."
In that, just as Frank was about to ask something else, Genevieve's voice came from one of the doors to their right. "Isabelle? Do you know where Sister Wright is? I can't seem to find her with the other patients upstairs."
"What?" Isabelle furrowed her brows in worry. "I saw her here like 2 minutes ago. Right before we left, to wait for the police to come."
From there, silence descended amongst them all. It was so quiet that even a pindrop could have been heard.
A moment later, another nurse spoke up, one who hadn't introduced herself to the police. "I- I think I saw her go toward the morgue, literally right as you called the police and left."
"The morgue?? But why? Did she not see what happened to Mr Yensin??"
Isabelle looked at Genevieve before moving her gaze to Frank, who felt her gaze and stood up a moment later.
She put her hand over her mouth in disbelief before she started talking. "W-what do we do now?... Is it safe enough to go and get her from down there? If it is, we have to hurry up before... before... Oh, I don't even want to think about it!"
The atmosphere in the room thickened tenfold as Frank felt the back of his throat go dry. Having heard what Karl went through, the last thing he wanted to do was descend into the basement and, furthermore, into the morgue.
But he knew he had to. Duty called.
"Maurice, you stay here with Mr Yensin and the other nurses. I'll have Nurse Isabelle Jenkins show me the way to the morgue."
"You sure you want to go in there alone?" Maurice asked, implying he wanted to come with him.
Frank knew he had no other choice. It was better for Maurice to stay in the reception and await the arrival of the paramedics.
"I've got this." Frank tried to reassure him.
Maurice nodded his head, extracting a walkie-talkie from his back pocket. "We'll communicate through this."
"Sounds good."
"Isabelle..." Genevieve began. "As soon as you and Officer Fallon find Sister Wright, or see that something's not right... You both run back here as fast as your legs can carry you..."
"And we'll call back up," Maurice added.
Frank nodded his head before looking over at nurse Isabelle, who gathered what was to happen next. "Please, follow me. This is the main way to get to the basement."
Leading them both to a double door, Frank glanced behind himself at Maurice, who, with the nurses, continued to look after Karl.
Letting the door close, Frank moved his attention to Isabelle, who stood by two flights of stairs. One which led up and another, which descended below the ground level.
Seeing how dark it had gotten, now that the presence of lit-up candles was behind them, he found himself having to turn on his flashlight. Almost instantly, with the light shining on the ground, a trail of blood caught his eye.
Tracing back the trail, he saw it led to the doors which they just walked through.
"Must be from Karl..." Isabelle reflected.
"At least we've got a lead on where to go... Follow the blood," Frank replied.
"If we weren't in an asylum, and that trail wasn't blood, I'd like to think that I was living my own story of Hansel and Gretel." Frank could tell Isabelle tried to crack a joke to lighten up the mood.
Going down the steps, Frank saw that the way to the basement consisted of another flight of stairs, which turned and was placed right under the ones above. Turning to their right, ahead of them, Frank's light shone on a door, ajar, several meters from the foot of the final step.
"I just hope Sister Wright is alright..." Isabelle muttered under her breath.
"Why did she venture down here anyway? All by herself, too?..." Frank asked, pushing the door open to let both himself and Isabelle inside.
"I don't know, I really don't... She's a sceptical woman, Officer. At least, from what I've gathered working alongside her..."
"Surely, she must have seen what had happened to the electrician, right?"
Isabelle merely shrugged. "As I said, she's quite sceptical."
"What do you mean by that?... She didn't believe you?"
Isabelle pursed her lips, shrugging once again. "Perhaps went to see it for herself. Even after we told her, and all the other nurses to stay put until the police came."
Frank nodded his head before looking around where they stood. The smell of the hospital made his stomach swirl in slight nausea. There was something else in the air, something he couldn't quite get his finger on. Some sort of staleness.
If it wasn't for the fact that the power was out and Isabelle wasn't by his side, he would have assumed the mental hospital was abandoned.
And funnily enough, all these years, he thought that was the reality of this institution.
"Where do we go now?"
"Normally, we'd take the lift," Isabelle began. "Since this level is the care unit, the big elevator ahead would allow us easy transport of bodies from here down to the morgue. But, since the power is gone, we'll have to use the stairway, again..."
Looking down at the floor, Frank nodded his head. "Following the blood..."
"Just hope they'll pay us to clean all this blood up..." Isabelle said through a sigh. The exhaustion was more than obvious in her voice.
"Cleaning up? Aren't you a nurse, though?"
Isabelle let a sheepish smile grow on her lips. "Unfortunately, with the staff shortages, many of the nurses have to become cleaners too... Not like it's new to us anyway."
Opening another door and walking down the steps, Frank found himself speaking up again, "Wait, so with the staff shortages, how's a building as big as this still standing?"
"Well... It's not really. Feels like it's on its last legs. Actually, I think it's felt like that for a while now... More than half of the hospital is closed off. Blocked from institutional use." Then, she paused, dwelling on her thoughts and debating whether she wanted to elaborate.
The institution had gone sour a while ago. Where once patients' health was placed first, money was the driving force now.
It made her think of Sister Wright again and her scepticism. Perhaps, she was conditioned to feel that way towards everything to do with this place.
"And how big is the morgue?" Frank asked a second later.
"I'd say... for an underground structure, it's on the bigger side. You'll see in a moment."
"Makes me wonder why it's so big for a mental institution. Surely, it would be easier to transport the bodies to a lone morgue... Albeit I'm most likely talking out of my ass."
"I'd be lying if I said I didn't ask myself that a few times, too. I've been told once or twice that this place used to be a hospital, before it was turned into a mental institution. So, I suppose that might explain it," Isabelle replied. "I've worked in another asylum before I came here, and there, they had a crematorium. Something they don't have here."
"You'd think they'd do something with the morgue before opening the place back up," Frank commented.
Isabelle gave him a mere shrug. "At the end of the day, we're asking a bunch of 'what if' questions. Looks like they've been doing just fine over the last 75 years. But I suppose having a morgue has proved to be useful in recent times as it's nearly full."
Frank looked at her in surprise. "Full?"
She nodded her head. "Unfortunately, as I'm sure you've heard, there's been a surge in deaths in the last while. So while there are a few of our patients in the morgue, the asylum offered places for other medical institutions."
"Wait, so... The bodies here... most of them are not from the asylum itself?"
"From what I know, that's right," Isabelle replied.
Those exact words churned something ominous in the pit of Frank's stomach.
A whole load of scenarios started running through his head. One of them being, since other third parties used the morgue, could there have been some sort of an error? Perhaps a mix-up, where someone alive was transported to the morgue?
To Frank, it might explain the reported attack.
Before them both, with his light shining on the door, they saw that this one was fully closed. Unlike the door that led to the intensive care unit, Isabelle took the lead this time, opening it and letting in both herself and Frank.
Stepping inside, almost instantly, he was hit with a clinical smell, stronger than what he sensed before. His mind linked it to the sterility of the facility.
And then, a second later, he pondered on how different this part of the hospital was from the rest. He knew it was a morgue, but his mind asked the same question.
Ahead of them, where the light from Frank's torch managed to reach, lay a desk, just like the one he saw in the reception of the asylum above. Turning to his left, his eyes caught the big lift they saw from the floor above, inoperative.
The trail of blood on the ground showed they were headed in the right direction. In a few places, Frank eyed fresh, bloody footprints, showing whoever was down here was heading in the same direction they were going,
Before pursuing them, Frank walked up to the desk, seeming to find a few documents lying on its surface. Isabelle followed his lead.
They were files, all multiple pages long, giving information on all the people who were dead and were now in the morgue.
"If you happen to find a patient of interest, and you need more information, I can run it by the asylum. I'm sure they'll be able to offer you a copy or so," Isabelle said.
"Thank you, but I don't think that would be necessary..." Pausing, he turned his attention back to the desk. "These files, laid out like this, made me wonder if they could hint as to what might have happened down here," Frank responded. Then, as if he remembered something, he turned back to Isabelle. "Can I ask if you might have noticed anything strange in the patients you've recently taken in?"
Confusion filled Isabelle at Frank's question; it made her furrow her brows. Nonetheless, when she thought back on his question, it made her realise it's been a while since they've received a new patient. "I don't remember the last time we've needed to take in a new patient, Officer... If anything, in recent times, we've taken in more dead people than alive."
Frank nodded his head, her words bringing him another wave of goosebumps. "Thank you... We'd better keep looking. Sister Wright couldn't have gone far."
They both advanced, opening a door stamped with a bloodied handprint.
Frank stopped for a moment, feeling a wave of cold hitting his face. In front of him, he noticed how his breath turned into condensation, and the deeper they got into the room, the colder Frank felt the air become.
"Something's not right..." Isabelle began, her breath also fogging in the ray of light emitted from his flashlight. "It's not meant to be this cold in this part of the morgue."
And in that, the sound of something falling muffled through the walls was heard. Frank, out of habit, pulled his pistol out and placed it next to his flashlight.
"W-what was that???" Isabelle shrieked, stepping back.
"I'll go and check it out. In the meantime, I'd urge you to stay here and wait for me, or go back upstairs; it's much safer there than down here."
Isabelle wanted to respond, but feeling her heart beating against her chest, all she could do was nod. Swallowing the lump that formed in her throat, she sent him off with one last instruction. "If you're looking for the room where we store the bodies, you can't miss it. It's just down the hall."
"Thanks..."
Just as Frank looked away. "Officer Fallon!"
He looked Isabelle's way.
"Please... be careful. Just as Genevieve said, if you hear anything or see that something's wrong, come back. And if I hear anything more, I'll call back up.
Giving her a small smile, Frank nodded his head. "Thank you for your concern, Isabelle. I'll make sure to come back with Sister Wright."
With that, he slowly backed into the cold room before letting the door close on its own. Already, Frank felt like the barrier was set. Whatever was in the morgue, he knew he was now a part of it.
Looking around himself, seeing all the chairs, some of them turned over and others broken, he realised the room he was currently in was some sort of small waiting room.
The way ahead was marked by the ajar door to his left.
Opening it with a creek, the blood trail on the floor further confirmed he was headed the right way.
Stepping out of the room, he realised he had entered a hallway. "Is this the hallway she told me about?" he muttered under his breath, shining his flashlight on the way ahead.
"Hello?... Is anyone here?" Frank called out.
However, he got no response.
He made his presence known once more. "This is the police. Anyone present is asked to show themselves."
Still, nothing.
At the very back, he saw a barricade, made with shelves and two gurneys. But as he walked toward the obstruction, a little before the barricade, to his right, he saw a metallic double door. Looking at the ground, the trail of blood showed him he was on track.
'Follow the blood... Follow the blood...'
Trying to open one of the doors, Frank realised he needed to use a bit more force than expected. Once open, he quickly walked in before letting the heavy door close itself.
Inside, he shone his light around the room, realising he disliked it more by the second. Its familiarity stemmed from the various horror films he'd seen in the past.
It rang as irony, thinking he'd never set foot into a body storage room.
In the middle of the room, one singular gurney stood, its position offset to the right.
His spine began to tingle the more he looked around himself, making his discomfort further profound. While most of the storage units were closed, some were left open, just about. While two or three that he could see were left wide open.
The blood trail continued, and as he traced it with his flashlight, he realised it led to the other side of the room. Another pair of metal double doors.
"How big is this damned place?..." he muttered under his breath. A pulling feeling tugged at his chest, and if he hadn't already felt unease flowing through his veins, the fact that his exploration of the place wasn't over just yet made him feel exactly that.
Walking up to the second pair of doors, Frank saw some blood on the handles. Opening it, he walked into another hallway. Hoping for the cold to subside even a little bit, the longer he stood in the hallway, the colder the air seemed to become.
Looking to his left, the beam of his light was met by another barricade, all the while to his right stood a door, closed, with a page stuck on it and a card reader situated to the left of the doorframe. Ahead of him, a mere metre from where he stood, was a door, ajar.
Reaching the door, he gulped before giving it a gentle push.
The state of the room was almost disturbing. It was a complete mess. So much so that Frank had no clue what the room was used for when it was fully operational.
A few beds were scattered around, all of which were turned over. And to his left, he found three bookshelves standing from the ground to just below the ceiling, which seemed to act as some sort of room dividers. On some of the shelves, books, tin boxes and some other clutter were seemingly forced into place.
Looking around to his right, two bloodied hospital gowns, ripped, lay on the ground by a chest of drawers. 'What the fuck happened in this place?'
"Is anyone here?" Frank called out. "Sister Wright?"
Chills coursed down his spine when he still heard nothing.
Walking further into the room, he followed the bookcases until he was met by one of the turned-over beds. It was pushed against the wall, and when he looked to the left, he realised it contributed to the clutter of things that blocked his way forward. Another obstruction.
His mind trailed back to what Karl said not too long ago. "Is this all his work?"
Taking a step back, he noticed a gap beside one of the bookshelves. Going down to his knees, he shone light into the hole. It was deep, deeper than he expected. And to get to the other side, he knew he had to crawl through it.
"There must be another way to get through to the other side, right?"
In that moment, an agonising scream caught Frank's attention. That of a woman. Immediately, Frank copped onto the fact that it must have been Sister Wright.
He had no time to think; he advanced into the opening, managing to just about fit with his broad frame. He kept his pacing fast, knowing that Sister Wright was still alive. If there was anything he'd realised over the last few days from the various cases he came to hear, it was that time was of the essence.
A few seconds in, he was about halfway through when he felt the palm of his left hand lay on something wet. It made him stop, his stomach merely turning at the thoughts of what he managed to put his hand into. With him having the butt of his torch secured in his mouth, he quickly turned his hand around, only to seea deep red hue spread across it. Blood.
It seemed to come from between two bookcases.
And as he looked to his left, his gaze caught something. Right between two bookshelves, a hand, half curled up. Pale. Still.
'Another body?'
Whatever happened here, it wasn't pretty.
"Frank?" Maurice's voice came from the walkie-talkie. "Frank, do you copy?"
Being in a confined space, it made it hard for him to get a hold of his communication device. "I copy..."
"You had me worried there for a second. What's the situation?"
Initially, Frank was at a loss for words. He didn't know where to begin. "It's bad, Maurice... Far worse than what we've witnessed before. I think I found another victim."
"Shit... Are you alright though?"
"I'm pulling through. No sign of Sister Wright yet, though."
"Should I call back up?"
"Do that, only the lord himself knows when they'll show up," Frank replied
"Alright, I'll do that. Be careful down there... Do you need me to come?"
"No, no. You stay with Karl... Are the paramedics there yet?"
"No," Maurice began. "We're still waiting on them."
"Alright. I'd better get going. I'll radio in when I find her."
"Alright, Frank. Good luck."
"I'll need it."
Placing the radio back onto his belt, he continued forward.
Reaching the other side, he felt his stomach further sink toward the ground when he got back up onto his feet. A feeling from within itched for him to go back. But looking back at how deep he'd gone, he knew the only way was to continue forward.
So, placing the beam of his light before him, he walked forward, one weary step after another. Following the length of two bookshelves, stacked side by side, to his left, the edge of the furthermost shelf allowed the beam to slowly capture more and more of the room. It wasn't until he saw a streak of blood on the wall that caught his eye that he stopped.
In that, like it triggered something within him, the smell in the air changed. Turning from that of a clinical institution into a metallic scent. He knew the reason for it. More blood.
Laced with it, he managed to gather another scent, slightly more pungent—almost ammoniacal, pinching his nose. That of decomposition.
And quite frankly, it caused his stomach to turn a bit more.
Making just past the edge of the shelf, he shone his flashlight around, looking at the new scenery before him. Only more blood. Albeit less than he expected.
To the wall on his left, he also saw a door, just like most of the others, left ajar.
Just as he was about to make his way toward it, the sound of something falling—shattering through the air like a metallic tray—ruptured the thickened silence.
"What was that?..." Frank released under his breath. The cold had long gotten to him; he found it harder to move his fingers as his feet felt like they were submerged in a cold bath.
As he made it closer to the door, the pinching stenches of blood and ammonia only seemed to get stronger. It seemed like the more he lingered on it, the more it seemed to pinch his nose. And once he opened the door, he saw the reason for it.
Another hallway, red remains patterned all over the floor, puddles forming in a few places. There were more splatters on the wall, as other markings which could just about be made out to be handprints.
Next to one of the puddles, Frank saw evidence that something was being dragged. Its trail led from another set of double doors, both of which were sprayed in blood. 'Is that where the sound came from?'
From everything he witnessed so far, and the amount of blood he had encountered throughout the morgue, he was sure that behind the very doors he looked at, they had a scene in which more than one victim was involved. Karl may have survived, but Frank began to suspect that Sister Wright wasn't so lucky.
He stepped out into the new hallway, reluctance growing within his chest.
A bit before the wall that led to the double doors, there was an opening that gave way to a smaller hallway, slightly narrower than the one he stood in.
But as he shone light down it, he realised it led to a dead end.
Looking at the bloodied drag marks on the floor, he decided to have his light follow them.
A pale, almost blue-ish hand, peaking out from under a draped white comforter, marked the end. The body seemed to be under a bed.
Hesitation made his limbs feel brittle as he decided to venture toward it. The scent of something rotting only seemed to grow stronger the closer he walked to the exposed hand. Crouching, he tried to keep the stomach bile from rising into his oesophagus as he grabbed the white linen.
In one swift move, Frank pulled the fabric over onto the bed, uncovering more of the body, and with it came the foul scent. He needed to take a step back before approaching the corpse once more. This time, getting that bit lower, he let the beam of light shine under the bed, where he caught a glimpse of the head, body and legs, all covered in clothes that seemed to have moulted with the decaying meat.
Bruised, skin cracked, and with some of its flesh missing, in the short few moments Frank managed to spend looking at the corpse, he confirmed it to be dead. Even feasted upon.
It confirmed what he feared the most. The case he began reading, this asylum had a similar story to tell. The cannibal murders were still ongoing.
Before he could think more, the sound of glass shattering caught his attention.
He looked behind himself. His gut was telling him that the sound came from the second body storage unit.
He gulped.
Standing up and walking to the double door, he let his presence be known before walking inside. "This is the police... Any persons present are demanded to show themselves immediately."
With that, clenching his teeth, he gave the door a mighty push, aiming his gun as he walked inside. What awaited him was nothing short of gruesome.
The stench was far more horrid than out in the hallway. Although seeming to be far more ammonical, it didn't save it from the pinching sensation that he now felt in the back of his throat.
There was more blood, a lot more blood, spread all on the ground. A few more bodies, still, were scattered on the ground.
But one of them, still breathing, caught his attention. It was Sister Wright.
"Sister Wright?!" Frank called out, rushing to her. "Sister Wright, are you okay??"
Trying to help her sit up, his efforts were futile once he noticed her struggle. She was unable to speak, and blood gushed out of the side of her neck. As he examined it with his light, goosebumps spread all over his skin when he saw that it was a bite wound.
Considering how much blood escaped her body, Frank knew a major bloodway had been severed. When he looked at Sister Wright's face, he could see how pale she looked.
They were running out of time.
"S-shit!..." On the table beside them, within his hand's reach, he eyed fresh gauze. Taking it and placing it onto her neck, he held pressure on the wound. "We're gonna get you out of here, Sister Wright. Stay with me..."
The movement of her blood-covered hands caught his attention, but only for a second as he went on to try to contact Maurice.
All he heard was static from the radio.
"Maurice?... Maurice, can you hear me?"
It took him a few seconds to tune the radio before making contact with his colleague. Through the ongoing static, Frank managed to make out Maurice's voice. "Frank? Frank, can you hear me? Is everything okay?"
"Yeah... I- I managed to find Sister Wright. But she's not well, she's not well at all..."
"Copy that. I'll be on my way."
Before letting their conversation finish, he asked next, "Is Isabelle with you all?"
"The nurse? No. She hasn't come back up yet."
The radio's static continued to fill the room, Sister Wright's hand catching Frank's attention once more.
"Try and reserve your energy, Sister." But when he looked back at her face, he saw how she widened her eyes. Fear.
She was trying to tell him something.
Next, a low growl was heard from behind, in which Sister Wright slowly and weakly raised her bloodied index finger, pointing just over the policeman's shoulder.
It made him freeze, his mind remembering almost instantly everything that Emily said.
Based on that alone, he felt it in his gut.
The person they were looking for stood right behind him.