"We were a little worried when the camera feed you were fixing came back to life but was all garbled," Phil said from next to Alex, his eyes scanning through video comments and emails on his laptop. "Glad to see you got it resolved."
"Haha, yeah you guys would be helpless without me," Alex giggled, leaning back in her chair. "Though you'll be helpless regardless..."
"What was that?" Phil asked without looking up from his screen.
"Oh, nothing. Don't mind me; I'll just keep watching the feeds."
The video coming from Jake's camera showed that the group was now walking down a hallway near the activity room while calling out for Officer Taylor. The eerie green glow of the camera's night vision mode created stark contrasts between light and shadow, adding to an extra creepy atmosphere. They passed by rows of solid doors that, if they even opened at all, led to abandoned bedrooms that contained simple, rusted beds with rotting mattresses. Some of them had a few more items inside, but most were just filled with trash and broken furniture.
Even after tracing their steps all the way back to the activity room, there was still no sign of Officer Taylor. Callie poked her head into the dark room and called out for her, but there was nothing she could see other than the blinking light from the camera in the corner. For a brief moment, she thought she heard something like a moan, but it was muffled and distant, so she shrugged and closed the door behind her, assuming the wind was just picking up outside.
"Damn, where the heck is she?" Camilla sighed, tiredly rubbing her face with her hands.
"Hopefully she didn't get hurt or something..." Callie replied, nervously chewing her lip. She checked her phone and noted that it was almost midnight, nearly the time they had promised to return to the lobby and wait. They had tried contacting Officer Taylor through her radio, but to no avail, and Alex was regularly checking in to let them know that she still hadn't seen anything on the cameras.
"We don't have time for this!" Callie exclaimed with a huff. "Let's just quickly get some more footage and return. I'm sure she'll be there when we get back." Everyone agreed. They pushed forward into the deeper parts of the asylum, checking air temperatures, doing more spirit box inquiries, scanning for electromagnetic frequencies, and the like, but nothing came of them... until Jake noticed something on his camera.
"Whoa wait guys! Hold up!" He whispered excitedly. "L-look at this! Quick!" He turned the camera around so that the digital display could be seen by the rest of the group. He hit a button to rewind the captured footage and stopped at a point where he had looked behind them to get a long shot of the hallway.
"What? What is it!?" Callie asked eagerly, practically stampeding over Amy to get to the camera. Her eyes lit up with amazement when she saw what was on the screen.
"Is that really anything to get excited about?" Camilla asked, a brow raised. It just looks like some dust or a digital artifact or something."
"No way!" Callie replied, shooting her an incredulous look. "That's clearly an orb!" Jake looped the video to make it easier to analyze. In the darkness of the recorded hallway, a single small, round speck of light could be seen moving lazily through the air at the far end for but a brief moment before disappearing.
"I can certainly sense a disturbance in that direction," Amy confirmed, gazing down the hall.
"I guess if it really IS an orb, that would be huge," Camilla admitted. "It's not often you see spiritual energy manifest like that."
"It's not!" Callie agreed with a smile. "This could be really big! C'mon, let's go get a closer look and scan the area back there!"
"You're the boss," said Jake, spinning the camera around again to resume recording as they quickly made their way back down the hall. Callie could barely contain her excitement, already pulling out gadgets to perform as many tests as quickly as possible so as to not pass this chance up.
Suddenly, as they passed an intersection in the hallway, Camilla stopped them all.
"Whoa wait, guys, did you hear that?" She said, shining her flashlight down the turn in the hallway that led away from their destination.
"Hear what?" Callie asked, practically skidding to a halt.
"I didn't hear anything," Jake added, pointing the camera down the hallway that Camilla was scanning. The green night vision simply displayed yet another empty, decrepit path with some broken signs hanging on the walls indicating that this was the North Wing of the hospital, where various therapy rooms were located.
"It sounded like radio static," Camilla said, stepping over a fallen IV pole to flash her light into some of the nearby rooms. "I'm pretty sure it came from somewhere around here. It could be Officer Taylor."
"Hello? Officer Taylor?" Callie called out, her clear voice echoing dully down the hall. There was no reply. "Huh, are you sure?"
"Eh, not really," Camilla admitted, "but I guess we should go check it out just to be sure."
"Aw what?" Callie pouted, we need to get back to where we saw that orb! We've lost a lot of time as it is standing around here! This could be the major break our channel needs!"
"Fine," Camilla sighed. You and loverboy go get the footage and Amy and I will go check real quick."
"I'm coming with you?" Amy asked in surprise, her feet shifting nervously.
"No way in hell am I going down this creepy-ass hallway alone in the dark. Besides, maybe you 'amazing psychic senses' will help us."
"Right..." Amy didn't seem too enthused by this idea. "Can't we all go and get the footage then come back together?"
"If it is Officer Taylor, she could have moved far away by then," Jake clicked his tongue. "I guess we can split up, but let's keep it brief -- make sure to check your radios, okay?"
"We'll only go to the end of this hall and then come back," Camilla assured him. "We're practically right next to you. We could probably just shout and hear each other if needed."
"I guess..." Amy sighed. "Fine, lead the way, Camilla. I'll focus my energies on feeling for Officer Taylor's aura."
"You do that. But stay close. We'll be right back." With that, Camilla and Amy began to make their way down the hall into the North Wing while Callie and Jake continued onwards.
"You guys good?" Callie called out behind her as they walked.
"Yep. If we get into trouble, we'll scream a bunch," Camilla yelled back from somewhere in the darkness.
"Sounds like a plan," Callie let herself chuckle a bit despite the growing feeling of unease starting to creep up the back of her neck. Perhaps it was the cold patch of air they had just passed by, but she was too focused on getting down the hall to notice her thermometer's readout dropping dramatically for that split second before returning to normal.
"You think it was around here?" Amy asked, shining her light around the dark hallway next to Camilla.
"Yeah it must have been," Camilla replied while checking the dusty handles on some of the closed doors. "I mean, all the other doors around here are locked anyway. So it's gotta be from one of these rooms."
"Why would she be down here, though?"
"Don't ask me; maybe she has a boyfriend or something she wanted to sneak away and chat with. Who knows? I'm just following what I heard. C'mon this bit over here is the last place we haven't checked." Camilla strode off towards a section of the tiled wall that didn't have any doors on it that led to a turn.
"What's... that?" Amy whispered from behind, unaware of how quiet she had spoken. Her eyes caught something glinting splendidly in a dark room as her flashlight flitted past. "I'm... just going to go see what this is... okay?" Camilla didn't seem to hear her, instead she kept walking onwards while calling out for Officer Taylor. "Okay..." Amy confirmed to herself, seemingly unable to look away from the shiny object as she slowly crept into the room, which had a chipped sign on the door reading, "Hypno Therapy."
She moved further in, passing a tattered couch, before coming to a stop at a table upon which sat a fancy silver necklace, though on closer inspection, it appeared to be a pendulum. The delicate silver chain reflecting in her light was attached to a small, thin metal disk with a hole in the center. Unlike the rest of the dust-coated room, the piece of equipment looked almost brand new. She was so enraptured by its glimmering sheen that she didn't notice how the door silently closed behind her, locking with a quiet click, nor the swirl of her visible breath that danced around the pendulum in the flickering beam of light.
"It's so pretty..." she sighed, mindlessly fingering the various pieces of jewelry hanging from her neck. As she did so, the sprigs of sage inside her clear amulet began to wither away into dry leaves, while the small purple stone in her amethyst necklace suddenly cracked down the middle. She hesitated for a moment before reaching down and scooping the pendulum up and dangling it in front of her face to admire it.
As she looked past it, she noticed one of Alexis's cameras set up in a corner of the room near a long-dead potted plant. She thought it odd, as she didn't remember them coming this way when placing equipment, but maybe she had just been spacing out. She did tend to get lost in daydreams now and then. Her mind wandered back to the pretty trinket hanging from her fingers. Without realizing it, she had started to gently swing it back and forth in front of her freckled nose.
Here green eyes drifted left and right to follow the base of the pendulum. Gradually, a certain drowsiness began to wash over her, muddling her thoughts. She had been thinking she needed to get away from this scary place, but now she didn't want to leave -- she just wanted to keep staring at that mesmerizing pendulum. She couldn't describe why she was doing it, but something about it just felt right. This was simply what pendulums were for: for hypnotizing good little sluts.
