IN THE SHADOWS

Genre: Horror 

 

 

 

IN THE SHADOWS

By Randy Romero

 

 

Detective Andrew Corso, a tall, lean, immaculately dressed man in his early forties, stepped out of the decaying building, looking a few shades paler. He’d seen a lot of things in his fourteen year career, but nothing could have prepared him for that.

He approached the groundskeeper, a gaunt old man with snow white hair and sallow skin. He was short and had terrible posture. He looked ancient to Andrew, who couldn’t even pinpoint his age. But the man’s age was irrelevant. Andrew’s only concern was the dead body in building three.

“You were the one who found the body?” Detective Corso asked the groundskeeper.

“Unfortunately,” the groundskeeper replied. “It’s not the first I’ve found, and sad to say, it probably won’t be the last. Teenagers love messing around in these buildings. They sneak in all the time at night. Public Safety patrols the area, but the kids usually hide their cars down the road and walk here. Public Safety will drive through, but they never search the buildings. I’m sure they’ve heard all the rumors.”

“That South Oaks is haunted?”

South Oaks was a mental institution in Fairview, Long Island. It opened in the early 1950’s and closed in the mid 90’s, and the buildings have been off limits to the public ever since. But that hasn’t stopped people from getting in. All the buildings used to be sealed and boarded up. But people kept finding ways of getting in. Eventually, the county gave up trying to seal the place off.

Public Safety do their best to keep the area clear, but kids always find a way to sneak around them. The local police rarely bothered to patrol the area.

“Uh huh,” the groundskeeper nodded. “I never believed it myself. But the shit I’ve seen over the years makes me think otherwise.”

Corso wasn’t the superstitious type. But being a detective meant believing that nothing was outside the realm of possibility. So he didn’t dismiss the groundskeepers claims, no matter how absurd they seemed. But he was interested in the facts, not the legend of South Oaks.

“Where did you find the body?”

“Building number three. The Thumper.”

“The what?”

“Kids call it The Thumper. In the daytime, it’s dead quiet. But at night, you can hear a loud thumping sound emanating from the basement as if someone or something is stomping around down there. Most kids know not to go in there when they hear that sound. Apparently not this one. Maybe his friends dared him to go in. Maybe he was feeling courageous, or stupid. All I know is he went in and it got him.”

“It?”

“The Giant. A former patient of the hospital.”

“All remaining patients were transferred to Windsor Sanitarium.”

“All living patients. The dead ones, they stayed behind.”

“You’re telling me that a spirit murdered that kid? He was tossed around that building like a ragdoll. Broke just about every bone in his body.”

“I’m aware of how crazy it sounds. But these buildings contain powerful spirits. Some spirits are harmless. They’re just lost and trying to find the light. But some spirits can leave a mark.”

Andrew hadn’t seen anything like it before. The boy, seventeen year old Matt Craven, had been thrown repeatedly into the basement walls of building three. Then someone or something hoisted him up and flung him full force into the ceiling.

Corso examined the body before speaking with the groundskeeper. Innumerable fractures and contusions. Massive blood loss. The back of his skull shattered against the basement ceiling.

“Tell me more about the buildings.”

“The Banshee is in building number four. You can hear her wailing at the top of her lungs every night, crying for her lost child that led to her being institutionalized. Building two, lots of roamers. Wandering spirits that are trapped and confused. They can’t find the light, so they stay here, doomed to roam the halls of these buildings. And don’t even get me started about building number one.”

“You found his friends hiding in building number five, right? But building five is one of the only buildings that is still all sealed up. How did they get in?”

“The tunnels. There’s a series of underground tunnels that run in between the buildings for easier access. They must’ve been in the basement with their friend in building three. They probably took off through the tunnels when they saw what was happening to him. Building five is where they used to perform the lobotomies. It was a different time when they first opened South Oaks. Back then, they thought they were helping. They didn’t know any better.”

“Show me the tunnels,” Corso demanded.

“Officer, with all due respect, you’d have to be a fool to go wandering around in those tunnels. I only go down there in the daytime, if I absolutely have to. And I mean absolutely have to. The only reason I went down there in the first place was because I heard noises in building five. Otherwise I would’ve stayed above ground.”

“I thought you said these buildings were safe in the day?”

“Some buildings are safe. But not the tunnels. Besides it’s pitch black down there.”

“I’ve got a flashlight. Lead the way.”

“Why do you want to see the tunnels so badly?”

“I need access to building five. I want to see where his friends were hiding.”

“What for?”

“Evidence. You may believe in spirits. I believe in reality, things like murder. One man couldn’t toss that kid around like that. It had to be the work of multiple people. I suspect his friends had something to do with it, but I need something to prove it.”

“Follow me,” the groundskeeper sighed. He led him past decaying structures with broken doors and busted windows, covered in vines and moss. Each one stuffed with asbestos. Each one a safety hazard. One wrong step in those buildings can mean the difference between life and death. There was the empty morgue, its body slabs ice cold. Old filing cabinets left behind that were never cleared out.

The long, narrow tunnels were dark and claustrophobic. They had to go through building four to get to building five. He climbed the steel ladder and the groundskeeper slowly followed him.

The tunnel was pitch black, just as the groundskeeper had described it. Corso’s flashlight only illuminated a small portion of the long, black tunnel. As they moved slowly through the tunnel, Corso heard something skitter past them. A rat was his first thought. He shuddered to think what else was down there. There were no openings, no ventilation system. Corso was feeling short of breath by the time they made it to building five.

The building was bare, minus a few desks and forgotten filing cabinets. The walls were decorated with graffiti. The rooms contained wired bed frames but no mattresses.

“Watch your step,” the groundskeeper warned him.

At the end of the hall, in the shadows, he saw her.

“Do you–”

“Yeah, I see her. A nurse who died here. She’s been wandering these halls ever since. I wouldn’t get too close to her. Remember, some spirits can leave a mark.”

She was a thin woman with a pallid complexion in an old fashioned white nurse’s uniform. The sight of her turned his spine to jelly. Corso heeded the groundskeepers warning and kept his distance. He tried not to move as he observed her, but he couldn’t stop himself from shaking. He watched as she silently turned a corner and disappeared down a dark corridor.

Corso took a deep breath and composed himself.

“You alright?” the groundskeeper asked.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Corso said, trying to shrug it off. They continued walking in the opposite direction of the spectral nurse.

They took a turn and the groundskeeper pointed with one bony finger.

“This is where I found them.”

The room was bare. They hadn’t left anything behind. He shined his flashlight across the walls and the floor. Not a drop of blood. They didn’t have any on their clothes either. But what had happened to their friend? There’s no way one man, or one spirit, did that much damage.

“Nothing to see here. Did you find anything else?”

He turned to face the groundskeeper, but the old man was gone. He checked the adjacent room. He checked all the other rooms on his walk back, but there wasn’t a trace of him.

When he got above ground, he breathed a tremendous sigh of relief. He walked back to building three and approached some of the officers on the scene.

“You guys seen the old man around here?” he asked two of the officers.

“Old man?” one of the officers asked.

“Yeah, the groundskeeper.”

They stared, mystified. “Groundskeeper? What groundskeeper?”

If Andrew Corso didn’t believe in ghosts before, he did now.